Her mouth is ajar, and if you look closely, you will notice that instead of a tongue, some kind of creature sits in it and looks at you with its black eyes. It's a parasitic bug Cymothoa exigua- a crustacean from the order of isopods, or isopods.
Interestingly, all young isopods Cymothoa exigua grow up as males. After penetrating the gills of the host fish, the crustacean changes sex and becomes a female (such changes occur only if another adult female isopod has not yet settled in this fish). During the transformation into a female, the crustacean greatly increases in size (up to 3 cm in length). The legs of the newly minted female lengthen for a more stable fixation in the owner's mouth, and the eyes, on the contrary, decrease, since the crustacean will no longer have to actively look for a home. After that, the female detaches from the gills and moves to the base of the tongue of the host fish, where she will remain forever.
Photo by © Els Van Den Borre from divephotoguide.com, taken in Lembeh Strait, North Sulawesi, Indonesia. There are many more beautiful photos of clownfish with an isopod instead of a tongue at this link.
Roman Orekhov
Tongue-eating woodlouse December 30th, 2013
Cymothoa exigua is quite a popular animal. It is also called the "eater of languages".
While the tongue woodlice grows up, she finds herself a fish in the form of a victim and clings to its gills. Interestingly, at this stage of her existence, she is a male, but then, when she directly penetrates the mouth of her victim, she turns into a female. In the fish's mouth, the lingual woodlouse clings to the tongue and sucks blood from it. After constant sucking of blood, the tongue of the fish dies off, and the wood lice becomes a fish tongue, remaining in the mouth of the fish for the rest of its life.
Now this language woodlouse is kept in the collection of the Horniman Museum ...
Fishermen who happened to catch a snapper with such an additive will remember this meeting for the rest of their lives. You open the fish's mouth to take out the hook, and from there a pair of someone's eyes stare at you ... And sometimes four eyes, because two small wood lice can settle in the fish's mouth at once.
Her mouth is ajar, and if you look closely, you will notice that instead of a tongue, some kind of creature sits in it and looks at you with its black eyes. It's a parasitic bug Cymothoa exigua- a crustacean from the order of isopods, or isopods.
Interestingly, all young isopods Cymothoa exigua grow up as males. After penetrating the gills of the host fish, the crustacean changes sex and becomes a female (such changes occur only if another adult female isopod has not yet settled in this fish). During the transformation into a female, the crustacean greatly increases in size (up to 3 cm in length). The legs of the newly minted female lengthen for a more stable fixation in the owner's mouth, and the eyes, on the contrary, decrease, since the crustacean will no longer have to actively look for a home. After that, the female detaches from the gills and moves to the base of the tongue of the host fish, where she will remain forever.
Photo by © Els Van Den Borre from divephotoguide.com, taken in Lembeh Strait, North Sulawesi, Indonesia. There are many more beautiful photos of clownfish with an isopod instead of a tongue at this link.
Roman Orekhov
In the photo, woodlice stuck to the tongue of a fish
The lifestyle of the language woodlice
This is where the fun begins. After atrophy of the tongue, the woodlice does not disappear anywhere from the oral cavity of the prey fish. On the contrary, she will now spend the rest of her life in the mouth of her carrier. In this case, the crustacean begins to function instead of the lost organ.
Taking on the role of the tongue, woodlice do not interfere with the nutrition of the carrier fish. All the food that the victim eats, the crustacean passes by itself, completely content with the blood and mucus produced by the fish.
Little is known about the life cycle of C. exigua. They reproduce sexually. It is likely that juveniles first attach to the gills of the fish and become males. As they mature, they become females, and mating takes place on the gills of the fish. If there are two males in a pair, one of them can turn into a female after it grows up to 10 millimeters in length. The female then makes her way to the fish's mouth, where she uses her front claws to attach herself to the fish's tongue.
The female lays her eggs in a special pocket on her abdomen. The gestation and hatching of eggs takes place there. New individuals, after being born, immediately set off for free swimming and are already independently looking for their own owner, in whose mouth they will spend the rest of their lives.
Woodlice do not change their carrier: once settled in the mouth of a fish, they will never move to another victim.
There are cases when two small crustaceans settle and live in the mouth of one fish (usually large). This is a rather rare phenomenon, but even in this case, the carrier fish does not seem to "object" such a neighborhood.
In the photo, two crustaceans settled in the mouth of the fish
Having reached a certain age, the wood louse dies. The atrophied tongue of the fish remains forever lost and is no longer restored.
Cymothoa exigua is quite a popular animal. It is also called the "eater of languages".
While the tongue woodlice grows up, she finds herself a fish in the form of a victim and clings to its gills. Interestingly, at this stage of her existence, she is a male, but then, when she directly penetrates the mouth of her victim, she turns into a female. In the fish's mouth, the lingual woodlouse clings to the tongue and sucks blood from it. After constant sucking of blood, the tongue of the fish dies off, and the wood lice becomes a fish tongue, remaining in the mouth of the fish for the rest of its life.
Now this language woodlouse is kept in the collection of the Horniman Museum ...
Fishermen who happened to catch a snapper with such an additive will remember this meeting for the rest of their lives. You open the fish's mouth to take out the hook, and from there a pair of someone's eyes stare at you ... And sometimes four eyes, because two small wood lice can settle in the fish's mouth at once.
sources
http://www.zooeco.com/0-dom/0-dom-r7-3.html
http://www.zoopicture.ru/yazykovaya-mokrica/
http://nat-geo.ru/article/383-yazyikovaya-mokritsa/
