Science
This creepy tongue-eating ‘vampire’ is a fish’s worst nightmare – CNET
Get a closer look at the blood-sucking parasite that eats, and then replaces, a fish’s tongue without it knowing.
This “vampire” crustacean (in purple) eats and then replaces the fish’s tongue.
Kory Evans/Rice University
Fish don’t have the easiest lives. They have to avoid predators, fishing nets, pollution and now vampire crustaceans that want to eat their tongues.
The tongue-eating louse will invade a fish’s mouth, then suck the blood from the fish’s tongue until the tongue completely fades away. Then the parasite replaces the tongue itself.
Rice University biologist Kory Evans discovered the creep…
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