Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Mad science: Gross.

In an email with the apt subject line of "Gah!", my friend Heather sent me a link to a post in Wired's "Geekdad." The post is titled "When nature is freakier than science fiction." In it, the blogger lists three freaky animals.

The third one is your new least favorite thing ever.

Proving that, while she is the generous and bountiful source of all, Mother Nature is also a bit of a sadistic freak, I give you the "unnamed parasitic isopod."



Here's the description:

Finally, fishermen off the northern coast of France have found a large parasitic isopod (a relative of the louse) that has evolved a rather hideous method for survival in its host: It gets into the fish’s mouth and then devours its tongue. It then attaches itself at the back of the fish’s throat where it presumably feeds of whatever the fish normally eats. The really bizarre part is that the fish doesn’t seem to suffer any ill effects other than the loss of its tongue.

The weaver fish's f-ed up human-like teeth just add to the omfg-ness of the whole thing.

3 comments:

Sasquatchan said...

Awesome!

I'm guessing the fish can now no longer differentiate between a nice claret versus two-buck-chuck ?

And I wonder how the critter could be adapted to a weight-loss device...

(That critter looks more like they took a sand-flea and stuffed it in the fishes mouth..Wiki seems to say that the sand-flea is a Mole Crab)

zoe said...

can something really be that ugly and also not harmful?
you're right, it's my new least favorite thing. *gag*

Anonymous said...

The angler fishes male mate atches itself to the females stumack and it basicly becomes a tummer like bump to be on call for reproduction thats all its really good for at that poit becase its stuck there for life and both mate benafit.