Poll of the Day > What the literal fuck?

(+) Yeah! (+)

The parasite severs the blood vessels in the fish's tongue, causing the tongue to fall off. It then attaches itself to the stub of what was once its tongue and becomes the fish's new tongue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymothoa_exigua
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That would be disgusting if it wasn't pretty funny.
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this is funny because we talked about this fish in this biology class i took. it was part of this in class assignment where we had to come up with an interesting ainmal. the group who chose that fish won. our classmates voted.
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Not much is known about the life cycle of C. exigua. It exhibits sexual reproduction. It is likely that juveniles first attach to the gills of a fish and become males. As they mature, they become females, with mating likely occurring on the gills. If there is no female present, within a pair of two males, one male can turn into a female after it grows to 10 millimetres (0.4 in) in length.[10] The female then makes its way to the fish's mouth where it uses its front claws to attach to the fish's tongue.
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