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Parasite eats tongue then becomes tongue.

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Dantac
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24 Feb 2011, 7:53 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymothoa_exigua

This is just... creepy. But also amazing. For a creature to adapt itself to become another creature's organ.. wow.

Cymothoa exigua, or the tongue-eating louse, is a parasitic crustacean of the family Cymothoidae. It tends to be 3 to 4 centimetres (1.2 to 1.6 in) long. This parasite enters through the gills, and then attaches itself at the base of the spotted rose snapper's (Lutjanus guttatus) tongue. It extracts blood through the claws on its front, causing the tongue to atrophy from lack of blood. The parasite then replaces the fish's tongue by attaching its own body to the muscles of the tongue stub. The fish is able to use the parasite just like a normal tongue



Vigilans
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24 Feb 2011, 7:56 pm

That's really gross but also very interesting :lol:


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24 Feb 2011, 8:06 pm

It seems to functionally, but not biologically.



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24 Feb 2011, 9:13 pm

Dantac wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymothoa_exigua

This is just... creepy. But also amazing. For a creature to adapt itself to become another creature's organ.. wow.

Cymothoa exigua, or the tongue-eating louse, is a parasitic crustacean of the family Cymothoidae. It tends to be 3 to 4 centimetres (1.2 to 1.6 in) long. This parasite enters through the gills, and then attaches itself at the base of the spotted rose snapper's (Lutjanus guttatus) tongue. It extracts blood through the claws on its front, causing the tongue to atrophy from lack of blood. The parasite then replaces the fish's tongue by attaching its own body to the muscles of the tongue stub. The fish is able to use the parasite just like a normal tongue


Isn't mother nature creative?



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24 Feb 2011, 10:31 pm

There was a guy talking about this at the Mensa RG I just went to, in a talk called "Evolutionary horrors". I'm guessing the OP probably went to the same RG, because this is a rather obscure topic, and it's too much of a coincidence that a thread on the tongue-eating louse came up only days after I learned about it.


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Chronos
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24 Feb 2011, 11:08 pm

LordoftheMonkeys wrote:
There was a guy talking about this at the Mensa RG I just went to, in a talk called "Evolutionary horrors". I'm guessing the OP probably went to the same RG, because this is a rather obscure topic, and it's too much of a coincidence that a thread on the tongue-eating louse came up only days after I learned about it.


With 7 billion people in the world, I don't think it all that unlikely that they just happen to stumble upon the subject.



aspi-rant
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24 Feb 2011, 11:26 pm

does it procreate and mate when the host fish is french-kissing with another victimized fish? and is that then categorized as oral sex?

:mrgreen:



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24 Feb 2011, 11:28 pm

Seen this before on wtf_nature, full of gross/weird but cool animal/nature stuff - http://community.livejournal.com/wtf_nature


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Titangeek
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25 Feb 2011, 1:54 am

Well on the upside i am not hungry any more :eew:


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LordoftheMonkeys
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25 Feb 2011, 11:19 am

Chronos wrote:
LordoftheMonkeys wrote:
There was a guy talking about this at the Mensa RG I just went to, in a talk called "Evolutionary horrors". I'm guessing the OP probably went to the same RG, because this is a rather obscure topic, and it's too much of a coincidence that a thread on the tongue-eating louse came up only days after I learned about it.


With 7 billion people in the world, I don't think it all that unlikely that they just happen to stumble upon the subject.


Yes, but within a couple days of each other?


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25 Feb 2011, 12:20 pm

That's amazing, thanks for posting!


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25 Feb 2011, 1:00 pm

Sweet little beast. 8)


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25 Feb 2011, 2:45 pm

That's really cool.


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25 Feb 2011, 2:54 pm

Louse got your tongue? topic

Weird, true and freaky. Food must taste lousy after that.

I often wonder about some people... :chin:


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25 Feb 2011, 2:56 pm

i wonder what the parasite tastes like :?


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27 Feb 2011, 7:24 pm

The only problem is when the louse dies before the fish. Then the poor fishy is tongueless and is going to have a very hard time swallowing things. :fish: