The Creature That Becomes a Usable Tongue

[00:00:00]A member of the family simothy, the tiny simothia exigu or tongue- eatating louse enters its victim through the gills.

[00:00:08]Once inside, the female latches on to the base of the fish's tongue while the male attaches behind her or on the gills. Through her front claws, she sucks the fish's blood, which causes the tongue to die and drop off. She will then reattach, this time to the tongue stub, effectively becoming its replacement. With a new factor of 10, the fish can and will use the parasite as if it were its natural tongue. Each infested fish almost always has more than one mating pair in its mouth. In fact, because these creatures are such loving couples, called isopods, where the male is attached to the female's back, it is more rare to see an odd number of lice in one fish's mouth than something like four or even six.

[00:00:47]Amazingly, other than losing a tongue, the infected fish seems to suffer little from this louse infestation. As one researcher noted, although sea exigu appears to be a benign parasite whose influence could modify the behavior of heavily parasetized fishes, the effect can be considered insignificant at the present time. As for reproduction, most LA females found attached to a fish tongue are seriously in the family way.

[00:01:12]It is estimated that each female can have between 480 and 720 legs, of which an average of over 200 typically reach maturity. helping things along. If there are two males in a fish without females to mate with, one of the sea exigu will change sex from male to female, not unlike what happens with clown fish if the female of the group dies. We've got more on that in our bonus facts in just a bit. Going back to the tongue parasite, if there is one bright spot in this story, it's that sea exigu does not eat human tongues. It's not poisonous and can only hurt you a little bit and then only if you pick one up and it bites you. Despite this, a person in Puerto Rico who allegedly accidentally ate a bit of sea exigu filed a lawsuit against the supermarket chain where she purchased its host fish. It appears as if the suit was dropped when testimony was presented that isopods are routinely consumed as food. Yes, indeed. In any event, until recently, it was believed that sea exigu had a range limited to the eastern Pacific from California to Peru and prayed only on eight species of fish, including three types of snapper, three types of drum, one grunon, and one grunt. However, in 2005, some poor Brit found one in the mouth of a red snapper purchased from a fishmonger in London.

[00:02:28]When asked at the time, an expert who was consulted a pinind, "I suspect that tonglouse was either imported here in the mouth of the red snapper or perhaps it has started to breed in European seas." More recent developments are making the latter seem more likely. For example, in 2009 in the waters off the Channel Islands near the coast of Normandy, France, fisherman discovered a tongue- eatating louse in the mouth of a weaver fish. And in April 2013, a Belfast man found one in his sea bass.

[00:02:54]Neither species was previously known to be susceptible to the parasite. To date, sea exigu is the only known parasite that is capable of replacing an organ or other structure that it has removed from its host. Now for some bonus facts.

[00:03:07]Clown fish, also known as anemy fish, are sequential hemaphrodites that first develop into males. In fact, they live in regiment at schools made up of all males and just one female. The lone female being the dominant and generally the largest fish in a given group. The second in command of the school is usually the largest and most aggressive male of the group. Due to his dominance of the other males, he'll tend to ensure they stay small via taking the best food opportunities for himself and things like that. Besides the perks of more food, he's also the only one who gets to get busy with the female. During breeding, the female will lay sometimes thousands of eggs depending on the species and their size, usually on a pre-cleaned rock or coral close to the anemone where they live. After the eggs are laid, the male will go along and fertilize them. From here, if a given egg is poor quality, whether damaged, i.e. nemo, or it becomes infected by a fungus or the like, the male will typically eat the egg. Likewise, if the egg is infertile or if the clown fish is an inexperienced breeder or is stressed, like if he just watched his lovely clownish wife eaten by another fish, he may also simply eat the eggs. Otherwise, the male and rarely the female will guard the fish for the 6 to 10 days that it takes for them to hatch. as well as regularly fan them, which increases the chances of the eggs successfully developing. After the eggs hatch, the parents job is done and they have nothing to do with the baby fish who ascend to the surface and feed on plankton until maturation. If the female dies, the dominant male will get first choice of food and begin to gain weight, ultimately becoming female. She will then choose a breeding partner among the available males. So for Marlin, Nemo being his own choice, but otherwise usually the largest and most aggressive male available. At the same time, everyone else moves up one in the pecking order. The two will pair off and breed together until something happens to one or the other, at which point the cycle begins again. It is thought that this ability to change sex developed because unlike many other types of fish, clown fish almost never stray very far away from their homes in sea an enemies, which they form a symbiotic relationship with. Thus, if not for their ability to adapt to potentially limited mating partners in their local area, they may not get a chance to breed at all. And now for another bonus fact. Going back to parasites, unlike the tongue louse, a wide variety of horrific parasites love to prey on humans. For example, although on the decline and slated for eradication by the World Health Organization, even today, the guineaorm contributes to cause pain and discomfort to people around the world. Entering a person in the belly of a water flea, the worm grows inside the human body to a length of 2 to three feet. When it's had enough, the guineaorm creates a blister, usually on the hands or feet. This blister will feel like it's burning, which encourages the human host to place the affected area in water. The worm ultimately then releases lava into the water through this area to continue the life cycle. Without proper medical attention, the affected host can develop a debilitating secondary bacterial infection. Finally, we have toxoplasma Gandhi, the parasite that could be living inside you right now as an estimated 33% of humans are infected.

[00:06:09]Disturbingly, it's also been linked to an increased chance of committing suicide, road rage, and traffic accidents. and certain forms of cancer among other things. So how do you catch it? Well, there are several well doumented and universally agreed upon ways in which an ordinary person can come into contact with the parasite and hence the disease. These are raw, uncooked meat, unpasteurized milk, raw and unwashed vegetables, cats, yes, your furry little animal that you keep as a friend, but is really just using you for your resources. Also, as a bit of fun trivia, the link between eating uncooked meat and the parasite was conclusively proven when scientists in Paris fed orphans nearly raw beef, horse, and lamb meat to test the hypothesis that the parasite could be transmitted in this way. If you're hoping that this happened hundreds of years ago, bad news. It happened in 1965.

[00:06:56]If you're now disgusted at the French for allowing such experiments on orphans, it should be noted that to test penicellin's effectiveness in treating syphilis and other STDs, researchers led by one Dr. John Charles Cutler from the United States, funded by the Public Health Service, the Pan-American Health Sanitary Bureau, and the National Institutes of Health, headed to Guatemala in 1946 and found prostitutes who had syphilis, getting them to then give it to unsuspecting Guatemalan soldiers, mental health patients, and prisoners. They also directly infected certain individuals by, to quote, direct inoculations made from syphilis bacteria poured onto the men's penises and onto forearms and faces that were slightly araided or in a few cases through spinal punctures. It isn't known how many people died as a result of this as the results from the study were never published. If you think that's bad, well, consider the Tuskegee syphilis experiment where about 600 American citizens were told they were getting free healthcare. But in fact, physicians were just studying how untreated syphilis progressed, many to death, as well as spreading it to others as they were not told they had it. Dr. John Cutler was involved in that one too, by the way. He faced no consequences for the numerous people that died in his experiments, and he even led an illustrious and celebrated career, including at one point becoming an assistant to the US Surgeon General. So, well, I guess karma is definitely not real. But we digress. In regards to cats, they are noted as being the definitive host of the toxopplasma gandhi parasite. In fact, it can only sexually reproduce when it is inside of a cat. However, it can asexually produce and live indefinitely inside the body of virtually any warm-blooded host like a human. But before you go out murdering adorable kittens, we do need to stress that the chances of catching the parasite from cats if you're doing anything other than handling cat feces directly and not washing hands after is really, really low. Nevertheless, as noted, up to a third of people worldwide are infected with it. Further, about 40% of people in the US have been exposed to the parasite at some point, often in unwashed vegetables, or undercooked meat. And about 15% of people in the US have the telltale cysts in their heart, nervous system tissues, and skeletal muscles, with each cyst containing many thousands of the parasite. However, it's likely that the vast majority of these people will never realize they're infected as these symptoms of toxopplasmosis in ordinary healthy people are usually non-escript and mild.

[00:09:15]If any symptoms do show up, it generally only happens when you first acquire the parasite. And these are simply mild flu-l like symptoms that last a couple of weeks. That said, by far the most fascinating thing about the parasite is its apparent ability to control the mind, or at least the behavior of certain of its hosts. Specifically, rats infected with the parasite will become unusually attracted to the scent of cat urine, a sense they usually avoid like the plague. Terrifyingly, the parasite seems to accomplish this by completely and permanently overriding the rat's natural fear of cats and their distinctive odor. Instead, the rat becomes intensely sexually attracted to it. Needless to say, that makes it much more likely that the rat will be eaten by a cat, which allows the toxoplasma Gandhi to get inside its preferred host.

[00:10:00]As of yet, thankfully, no such attraction to cat pee and Mr. Bigglesworth has been noted in humans as a result of being infected. However, there are countless studies showing various correlations between those infected and things like increased suicide rates, 2.65 times more likely to die in a car accident, lesser ability to maintain focus for long periods, association with schizophrenia, increased aggression, etc., etc., etc. One study even showed business majors in college are significantly more likely to be infected than not. And those who go on to start their own business are almost twice as likely to be infected than those of the general populace. That said, correlation doesn't equal causation. And further research is needed on pretty much all of this when it comes to humans.