It sounds like something out of a bad horror flick: “Bizarre Tongue-Eating Parasite Discovered Off Jersey Coast!” But that’s an actual headline from Treehugger and they’ve got pictures to prove it. This ghastly little critter attacks a fish, burrows into it, eats its tongue and then proceeds to live in its mouth.
From Treehugger:
While the isopod, a kind of louse, has been known to exist for a while now, discoveries of live specimens is rare. The BBC reports that “Fishermen near the Minquiers – islands under the jurisdiction of Jersey – found the isopod, a type of louse, inside a weaver fish.” So no, the tongue-eater wasn’t found in that Jersey. The Jersey Shore is still tongue replacing creature-free, if you stateside Northeasterners were worried about the thing ruining your late summer vacationing.
Not that you’d have to be too concerned anyways–the isopod isn’t a threat to humans in the slightest, though it’s reportedly vicious, and can deliver quite a little bite. One of the fishermen who found the creature described it thus: “Really quite large, really quite hideous – if you turn it over its got dozens of these really sharp, nasty claws underneath and I thought ‘that’s a bit of a nasty beast’.”
A bit of a nasty beast, indeed. This thing is pretty sick, but it’s also yet another amazing example of the vast variety of creatures that exist on this planet.
Link [Treehugger]
Photo credit: Clever Cherry
