Strange Ball of Yarn!

I started a new aran project last night and as I started to cast on, I pulled the yarn from the middle of a 400g ball of aran. I pulled out a right mess and was really surprised at what I found!
The centre of the yarn wasn't a long length at all - it was a huge bundle of smaller sections of yarn, all about 30cm (or 12 inches) in length. There weren't just one or two of them, there was a huge handful:

At first I though a mouse had somehow got into the centre of the ball ---- but the balls of yarn had been in a bag that had no signs of rodent activity, and the ends hadn't been chewed and there were no tell-tale 'mousey' signs in the ball!

Mr M thinks that somehow, somewhere, in the balling up process, someone has shoved a load of ends into the centre of the ball to make up the weight! He has a suspicious mind!!

I should add that the yarn was bought a while ago from a mail order company that has now gone out of business but the yarn was actually produced by a well-known spinning company.
I've never had this happen before - how odd!!

If anyone can throw any light on this I'd be very interested to hear!