Art of rally first person6/15/2023 ![]() The fish needs to look after the parasite because if the parasite disappear, then the fish don't have a tongue anymore and then the fish is in trouble.ĬHAKRABARTI: So Professor Smit remembers that day, many years ago, when he first saw what would become a new species or a new species to science, I should say, of parasitic isopod. So in that sense the fish is fine and the parasite is fine. It actually just takes some of the food of the fish. But the parasite can't stop feeding on the fish. ![]() ![]() So it needs the parasite to continue to be able to eat and all those kinds of things. SMIT: The amazing thing about this is that the fish doesn't really then have a choice, because the parasite function as the tongue. Now, Nico Smit says that the fish and parasite can live together for many, many years, decades, even because the fish can't actually get rid of the parasite even if it wanted to. Because it looks just like the fish's tongue, but with some eyes staring out of his mouth. And this is pretty amazing because it's only known in the world where a parasite actually replaces the functional body part of an animal and then function as that body part.ĬHAKRABARTI: I have to say my first response when seeing a photograph of this parasite was, Wow. They can sit on the tongue, then they destroy the tongue of the fish, and then they function as the fish's tongue. So these are the isopods that go into the mouth of the fish. NICO SMIT: We found a new species of tongue replacement isopod. Many years ago, while working on his Ph.D., Smit ran across something special in the coastal waters off South Africa: a tongue-replacing parasite. Professor Nico Smit specializes in aquatic parasitology at Northwestern University in South Africa. The famous tongue replacement isopod, Ceratothoa famosa, in the mouth of a Cape seabream.
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