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The Spotted Rose Snapper, which lives off the coast of California, is one of a handful of species of fish that are plagued by one of the strangest parasites in all of nature: Cymothoa exigua, a crustacean about the size of a fish’s tongue when fully grown. The young parasites invade their intended host fish by entering the gills. Within the gills, the C. exigua all mature into males. But these parasites are protoandritic hermaphrodites, meaning that the adult males can change to females—and in a fish infected with C. exigua, one of the invading crustaceans does exactly that.
The new female migrates through the innards of the fish into its mouth, and attaches herself to the tongue. Next, she leeches blood from the fish’s tongue until the muscle atrophies and falls off—hence the parasite’s more commonly known name: the tongue-eating louse. The parasite then uses its rear legs to clamp itself onto the withered tongue-stump, and it effectively takes over as a replacement for the organ. The parasite will spend the rest of its life there, living off the blood and/or mucus of the host fish, and occasionally mating with a male that visits from the gills.
Cymothoa exigua is the only parasite known to effectively replace an organ in their host’s body.
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WOW! How come no one else has commented on this?! IT’S INCREDIBLE!!!
We’re speachless, and perhaps a bit afraid of exposing our tongues.
This is just down right disturbing. But at the same time extremely damn interesting. I can’t help but to put myself in the fish’s shoes. I bet the feeling of a parasite in your mouth that you can do nothing about is very unpleasant. The look on the fish’s face says it all……”WTF?!”
Abu Ibrahim gave this link in “Mind-Controlling Wasps and Zombie Spiders”:
http://www.bogleech.com/bio.html
This site includes this creature as well as tons of other really strange ones. Thanks for that link Abu, cool information.
Chory said: “We’re speachless”
Well that comment is a bit tongue-in-cheek.
Ok that is just disgusting! That’s all I have to say about that…
Nature is wonderfully cruel isn’t it?
Wow, I’m not opening my mouth in the water again for the rest of my life.
It’s really interesting going through the archives and seeing how this site has evolved over the last year. I’m glad that the newer articles are longer, it shows the growth and maturation of the staff of this wonderful site.
Sometimes I think an organ of mine might have a mind of its own!!
Horrifying, but not unique: newsia (foxus) is a fire-spitting, bile-secreting parasite which often replaces the tongues of media.
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Good read. What else is new, natural world explainations are always genuine good stuff.
People shut up and stop being afraid. One day of fright and then back into the water.
I have one of these critters at home. It is dried out but quite well preserved. When i was a child of about 8, my neightbour had brought some fish back that they had caught locally. I remember this thing came crawling out of the fish’s mouth. It was so odd that I grabbed it and kept it in a matchbox padded with cottton wool (it took a while to finally stop moving, but thereafter dried out quite nicely). I never though to look to see if the fish had a tongue at the time (In fact I’ve never known what it was until now – I just figured it was some arthropod gill parasite). I’m pretty sure the fish was a snapper, but it well out of it’s expected range being as I live in New Zealand… I still have the thing.
Wow. That is one freaky little critter. Its a good thing u got the bug out before u cooked the fish!
I wonder if the shortness of the article has anything to do with the time of the posting.
I wonder.
Reverie in the theatre of her mind.
Aaah,,, perfect solution for tissue engineering!
I’m guessing that the non-infected school of fish probably let the infected ones go their own way. Plus i’d imagine it’s awkward to try to keep a conversation going with a buddy who’s just lost his tongue.
We found one off a fish we caught down a river in wanganui new zealand.