RIAU24.COM – A rare phenomenon occurs in a fish, where his mouth is infested with tongue-eating fleas or parasites. The flea seems to replace the fish’s tongue and may stay for the rest of its life.
As the name suggests, the parasite is sucking blood from the fish’s tongue until the entire structure of the tongue dies.
The incident occurred when a student named Don Marx was fishing in the waters of Cape Agulhas, South Africa. He said that at that time he managed to get a fish weighing 2.7 kilograms.
But the 27-year-old was surprised when he looked into the fish’s mouth, where he found another animal living in it. Marx, who also received an education in marine biology, thought that he had heard of fleas living in animal bodies, but had not seen them in person.
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Without a second thought, Marx swiftly took out his gadget and captured the rare moment of fleas living in the fish’s mouth. Then Marx took his findings to Professor Nico Smit, where he was a zoologist from North West University.
“As a marine scientist and having fished from a young age, I have seen parasites that live in fish and sharks,” Smit said. Daily Mail.
“But no one expected me to open the mouth of a wooden fish and see a blue eyed alien with a mustache staring back at me. Tongue-eating tick species use fish as hosts and have been hiding from us for years,” he added.
Scientists claim the existence of tongue-eating fleas for a long time, but studies of the parasite have only recently begun. Researchers say that a species of tongue-eating lice is born male, then he drifts away in the water while looking for fish as a host.
There are 280 species of ticks identified so far, he will look for one fish that is used as a victim. Once the flea finds the right fish, it will swim into the fish’s body through the gills.
If the fish does not have parasites in its body, the flea will stick to the fish’s tongue and cut the blood vessels using its claws and suck the fish’s blood as its food.
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While in the fish’s mouth, the male flea will gradually turn into a female and its body will enlarge while its eyes will shrink.
However, if the tick enters the gills and finds a tick that has arrived first, then the tick will still be a male and live attached to the gills.
The impact on fish that are infested with parasites is a reduction in fish weight, it could be the number of parasites that attach to and suck the blood of the fish. left will die when the fish also dies of blood loss.
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