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Izismile.com » Animals » The Tongue Eating Louse is a gross parasite living in a fish’s mouth! (18 pics)

The Tongue Eating Louse is a gross parasite living in a fish’s mouth! (18 pics)

Posted in Animals 9 Sep 2009 / 18954 views

Cymothoa exigua or the Tongue eating louse is a parasitic crustacean. It tends to be 3 to 4 cm long. This parasite attaches itself at the base of the spotted rose snapper's tongue, entering the fish's mouth through its gills. It then proceeds to extract blood through the claws on its front three pairs of legs. As the parasite grows, less and less blood reaches the tongue, and eventually the organ atrophies 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. It appears that the parasite does not cause any other damage to the host fish.
This is the only known case of a parasite functionally replacing a host organ.

The Tongue Eating Louse is a gross parasite living in a fish’s mouth! (18 pics)

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Tags: parasite, fish, gross, tongue, Cymothoa exigua

Comments (14):

nat 2 year s ago

Oh.My.God.

THAT'S DISGUSTING!!
And very disturbing!

Made my skin crawl.

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Maggot 2 year s ago

Xenomorph.

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Roxana 2 year s ago

holly sh*t

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HollyxHero 2 year s ago

Oh my. That's is quite odd... freakin cool at the same time.

I got my stitches stitched, I got my fixes fixed,
In my aching head, I got my kisses slit.
Our gossip lips stuttered every word I said, I said,
I got your love letters, corrected the grammar and sent them back.
It's true romance is dead, I shot it in the chest then in the head.

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Mouserz 2 year s ago

woagh, look at them fish teeth on the 6th picture.

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severe_009 2 year s ago

yeah they have human like teeth n_tongue

but thats

and scary

Challenge breeds excellence...

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Taurien 2 year s ago

I bookmarked this link. Thank you for good job!,

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Nydardon 2 year s ago

I want to say - thank you for this!,

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je5u5 1 year ago

this is cool loking thing

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10.

je5u5 1 year ago

wat up

this thing is sow pppppp.... ogly n_sm_19

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11.

D. Cronenberg 1 year ago

These photos reminds me of the scene in "Shivers" when you see Lynn Lowry from Paul Hampton's viewpoint as she opens her mouth to kiss him. Not only are these lousy louses disgusting, they're also plagiarists!

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12.

Weight loss pills 1 year ago

Well done! Keep it up!

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13.