Fact Friday

The tongue-eating louse lives up to its name, or at least the females do. She enters a fish’s body through the gills and cuts off the circulation to the fish’s tongue. When the tongue falls off, she becomes the fish’s new tongue, feeding on the fish’s blood and/or mucus.

Cymothoa exigua By Marco Vinci [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0] 1 September 2013 via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cymothoa_exigua_parassita_Lithognathus_mormyrus.JPG.

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Fact Friday

August 30, 2024

Farmer Damselfish

Farmer damselfish get their name because they actually “farm” a patch of algae, including pulling out the weeds! These fish also aggressively defend their crops from other, much bigger fish and even humans. Scientists have discovered that damselfish cannot digest all types of algae. These farmers pull out all algae except for the one they prefer. Often the favored algae seems to grow only on the “farms”. Learn more.

Stegastes migricans By Elapied [CC-BY-SA-2.0-FR (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr] 23 March 2006 via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stegastes_nigricans_1.jpg.

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