<insert marriage joke here />
The anglerfish is well-known among schoolchildren and the aquatically curious for the "fishing pole" extending in front of its mouth, used to catch its prey. It is less well-known for a peculiarity of its biology, wherein the much, much smaller males attach themselves to the females, and then proceed to ... well, burrow in permanently. Their circulatory systems join, their skins merge, and the male's brain and body atrophies until it is effectively a pair of gonads attached to the female for when she needs to fertilize some eggs.
4 Comments:
Wow! This isn't sex and the beach, it's sex in the ocean!
I had no idea about anglerfish ... thanks for the info! That has to be the freakiest nature adaptation I have ever heard of. I only knew about grouper (they change sex mid-life, if needed.)
My son wathces Animal Planet. A lot. So nothing much surprises me any more. And yes... I knew this one about the angler fish (though I had forgotten it.) Did you hear the one about hte parasite that.... never mind.
I'll stop the world and melt with you...
Hah! I like that, cb.
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