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.
March 7, 2025
Longfin Spadefish
Nothing to see here! The longfin spadefish has a unique tactic to avoid predators. When they are young, divers have observed them mimicking floating leaves. They lie on their side and drift back and forth in the waves to avoid being eaten. That’s “batty” behavior!
Photo Credit: Derek Manzello
