December 11, 2012 • 17 mins
Organisms do what they can to get ahead and sometimes that means crawling inside a fish head and chewing out a niche. In this episode, Robert and Julie get to know Cymothoa exigua, the horrifying and ingenious parasite that replaces a fish's tongue.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind?
From how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Julie Douglas. We are recording this just before Thanksgiving
(00:25):
and you will get to listen to it sometime after Thanksgivings.
So for those of you who engage in this holiday
of culinary excess, then you will you'll probably be stuffed
a bit, You'll be kind of filled with food. So
this podcast is for you to to to maybe help
with your digestion, to maybe make you think, well, maybe
I don't have it that bad after all, it could
have been worse, or or maybe you may end up
(00:47):
thinking I could have had a little more help eating
that food than I actually had, because you probably had
to do most of the chewing and swallowing and manipulating
of the food in your mouth all by your lonesome.
That's right. So we're going to bring you a little
topic today. That's think of it as a palate cleanser,
or as you say, an aid uh. In your next
foray into culinary indulgence. We are talking specifically about a
(01:11):
tongue eating parasite, yes, sigh motha exegua, which we will
now refer to as the I pod. Yes, the I pod.
This is a fantastic creature. If you have not seen
a picture of this, go to the blog post that
we're gonna put out to go along with this episode.
You'll see some photos or some links to some photos
some of that video to to reacquaint yourself with this
(01:34):
parasite that essentially, spoiler takes the place of a fish's tongue.
It is actually when there's things that's like truth is
stranger than fiction because it's very hard to I think,
dream up this creature, but here it is. Yeah, and
don't to my knowledge, no one had dreamed this one
up before. Um, you know we everyone loves a good
parasite in a horror movie. Stuff busting out of chess,
(01:55):
living in people's blood, I mean, you name it, they've
done it. Like, but this sounds something like the only
thing in fiction that I can think of is it
sounds like something that they would have made up for
Invader Zim. Like it's that level of just twisted, but
also like it's it's gross and dark, but also kind
of silly in a way. Oh yes, it's very silly. Well,
let's get into the meat of it, as it were
(02:17):
in topic, Yeah, the tongue meat of it. Let's describe
what this, this pod crustacean is, all right, Well, outside
of its eventual home inside of a fish's face, it's
a one inch long isopod, which is like a crustacean,
all right, it's kin. It's close at kin that most
of us I think will be familiar with is a
little thing called a pillbug, or we always call them
(02:38):
roly polis, those little little segmented because they're they're segmented,
kind of like a little armored dudes, right, much like
the roly poli, the pillbug that when you poke it
with your finger when you find it outside, it rolls
up into a ball. So it's kin to that. And
it looks a lot like that, except it's pale, one
inch long, lives in the water, shell covered, leggy, segmented,
and on its underside it has dozens of sharp, cruel
(03:00):
looking claws. Yeah, and it reminds me kind of like
a cockroach, even though it's it's much more segmented. It's
just opaque, white and very legging in appearance. As you say,
it's it's got the claws, particularly that it's got two
big claws sticking out, and you know, it's got a
pretty prominent face and eyes, which is very disturbing. Yeah,
(03:21):
because it's not only that you peer inside of fish's
mouth and you see a creature, because you wouldn't necessarily
register that it's a creature. You see like a white
lump that looks kind of like a tongue, but it
has eyes and it's staring at you. And they can
be found in the Gulf of California south to north
of the Gulf of guy a Quill in Ecuador, and
(03:44):
it's also been found off the coast of California and
New Jersey as well as off the coast in the UK.
So it's been kind of popping up in different places
that people did not expect. And we'll talk a little
bit more about that later on the podcast, but let's
get down to the nitty gritty of out how it
does what it does, how it actually takes over the
tongue of the fish. Yeah, so it starts out, of course,
(04:08):
on the outside of a fish. It's just swimming around.
It's yeah, and then it comes up to a snapper
all right, goes into the gills and into the creature's mouth,
and then it latches onto the tongue. So it's first
big feast, of course, is it's gonna start drinking some
tongue blood. It's nutritious, it's readily available, and there's not
(04:29):
a lot of room, you know, in amount, like think
of your own mouth, like just it's kind of a
horrifying thought, but you know, you just feel your tongue
setting there in your skull all the time. You know,
I don't move it just a lot. And it's kind
of gross, you know, because it's just this lump that
lives in your mouth. So the ice apot is think
what's not really thinking. But if I can antromomorphize it
(04:49):
a little bit, it's like it says, Hey, this place
is great. I just need to move this guy out
the tongue. And I can get this guy out of
here because the tongue is like, the tongue's got a
pretty good deal. It's just setting here in the mouth,
foods passing by. If I get rid of the tongue,
I can totally steal that job. I can do it
just as well as the slump of tongue can do,
and then I'll have access to food. And so it
(05:11):
cozies up to the tongue artery it begins to drain
it until the tongue starts to wither away in atrophy.
And that's when the fish decides that excuse me on
the fish with the iypod decides that it is going
to hang out and act as the tongue for the fish.
And when I think it's fascinating about this is that
it does kind of start out as sort of like
(05:32):
tiny sea lice, and then as you say, it does
attach itself to the gills and um, it begins to
develop and then the female is the one that makes
it its way to the tongue and it really takes
up residents and by that time it is full grown.
It is this creature living in the mouth of the fish.
And we've talked about symbiotic relationships in nature before, but
(05:55):
this is one of those situations where you kind of
have to wonder, you know, is this mutualism or is
it truly parasitism because the fish can still live and
we've talked before, I mean even even in situations where
we think something's a straight up parasite situation or straight
up mutualism situation, it's often not that cut and dry.
It's there's a whole lot of gray area. And even
(06:17):
with something like this, which on the surface sounds pretty parasitic,
like if something crawled into my mouth, ate my tongue
and replaced it, I'd be a little upset and and
a little insulted. But but but you would probably say
to yourself, an isopod tongue is better than no tongue
at all. Right, Well, maybe certainly we'll get into this more,
but I mean, certainly people can get used to a
(06:38):
lot of weirdness with their body over time. Maybe maybe
this is one of those things. But I mean, for starters.
Two three study found that fish with the parasites in
their mouth they did have lower blood counts than the
ones that still had tongues in tag. So it's clear
that they are drinking some blood in there. They are
actively engaging in some blood drinking. But then the other
thing is that, yes, they are eating food that comes
(07:02):
through the mouth as well. Yeah, and they did even
say that when when the I pod is in there,
that it will act as the tongue and actually kind
of trap the prey, as a tongue would against the
teeth and help out the fish in that instance, if
the totally making me rethink all the things my tongue does.
You don't think of your tongue is a creature, but
it kind of is. It's just it's like the guardian
(07:24):
that lives in your mouth and chases after bits of Twizzler.
Twizzler again, huh, you're still on the Twizzler kick. Well,
it's just it's probably the tongue's greatest enemy. You know,
there's a lot of war between that, because the twizzler
latches onto the tooth and then the tongue goes in
and battles it for like an hour. That and those
little gummy things, any really hard ones, the dots, I'm
(07:45):
not familiar with them. They're they're pretty rough. Well okay,
So if an isopod was actually replacing the human tongue,
what sort of relationship do you think it would have
with a toothbrush? Um? I guess it depend how much
tongue brushing you do. You're supposed to do a certain
amount of tongue brushing, right, I don't think it would
take kindly to that. I don't think it would either.
(08:07):
I think it would be an adversary. All right. So
what I think is really fascinating about this about this
isopod taking the place of the tongue, is that this
is the first known case of a parasite that actually
replaces an organ of its host. So, I mean, it's
phenomenal to see this. It's it's you know, spectacular looking,
but the fact of the matter that it is taking
(08:29):
over an organ in the actual host is is pretty cool. Yeah,
because like we said, it gets in there, and it's
not just a situation where it says, I'm where the
tongue is now, I'm gonna eat all the food. I'm
gonna run this show. It actually behaves like a tongue.
It actually helps pass food back to the to its host.
Like it's not it's not just gonna want to kill
a tongue. It's got a pretty good deal going, but
(08:50):
it needs to make sure some food gets through for
it to continue this strange existence. And then, like you said,
the parasite is replacing an organ and and you just
don't see this anywhere else in the known animal world.
It would be like if a parasite came up to
you and said, that's a pretty good eyeball you've got there,
I can do just as well. Let me eat that
(09:12):
eyeball and take its place. You know. It's like it's
that level of just it's crazy like nature. Again. Nature
is stranger and more twisted than anything we come up
with in our own horror on the side. That's the
truth right there, because it really is horrific looking, all right.
So we had mentioned that this pod has been popping
up in unusual places like the coast of the UK,
(09:35):
and scientists think that the reason for this is connected
to over fishing. Yeah, Like, it's worth noting that we've
known about this for a while, Like I've blogged about
it a few years back, and people have known of
this creature for even even longer. I probably around the
first time someone was like, what is in that fish is? Now?
So it's there's nothing new about it, but it is
(09:56):
rare to find a live example of it, and we've
certainly found more of them in recent years, which leads
credence to this idea that we're actually seeing more instances
of this parasite. There's more of it out there and
in one possibility here is that it all comes down
to over fishing. Carl Zimmerman did a piece on this
for Discover magazine. Of course, he's the author of the
(10:17):
book Parasite rex so he's all about looking at what
parasites are doing and how parasites are are changing and
involving in particularly. Who's looking at a study that looked
at one population off the coast of France where fish
were living in a protected marine environment, and then they
looked at another marine environment off the coast of Italy
that is heavily fished and in protected waters. The scientists
(10:38):
found of the fish had parasites in their mouth in
the fish waters dead. So that's a sevent increase in
the heavily fished areas well. You know what's crazy about
that is that nearly half of the fish, half of
the fish in those particular waters, have this creature in
(10:59):
their mouth. So you know what happens, of course, is
that every once in a while, some of these show
up in the grocery store. You know, you might get
a mackerel, you might be in Canada and get a
mackerel and then realize that you know, this creature is
staring at you and you just expected to jump out
into the spaceballs dance on the table, you know, because
it has that weird kind of cute little face like
(11:21):
it's like it does it does, which totally makes sense
about why the recent The Bay movie came out, which
is centered around this isopod. Yeah, I'm meant to try
and watch it because it's available right now for like
paid streaming on certain websites. They're doing that now where
it's something will be in the theater and then it's
almost instantly or instantly available elsewhere to stream. But yeah,
(11:44):
this this movie is like a found footage horror film
where it's due to an ecological disaster. Suddenly they're like
is pod rewired zombies running wild and people are freaking
out over it. Yeah. The idea is that these is
A pods mutate because they're exposed to a massive, massive
amount of steroid rich chicken waist, which somehow makes them
(12:06):
want to uh taste human flesh and then take over
a human. So of course we take this idea and
we try to figure out like the worst possible idea
of what could happen, and that would be if you,
Robert Lyn open your mouth right now and the little
iPod was talking to me, so of course this is
bunk though, right, this could never happen, right, This is
(12:26):
a creature for fish and off fish, so the chances
and it's just not gonna happen. It's this is not
Our bodies are not the habitat for this creature. But
if it did, I think we should give a listen
to what it might sound like if we were talking
to us. Hey there kid, how you doing yeah with
(12:50):
Jake last night? Yes, so that's hilarious. That's from a
little YouTube video which will also include on the blog
entry that accompanies this episode. But it's the ideas that
dude wakes up and he has the ice of pot
living in his mouth and it's bossing him around, which
I think would happen, right if they're going to do
adults or to adults, to humans, human adults. But again,
(13:11):
this is not something that could happen. And even if
you were to eat a fish, a mackerel that had
this parasite in it, you yourself would not become sick.
There's just really no health hazards to it. It's just
sort of disgusting to think about. But you know, we
can't help but think about it, because it is a
stunning and grotesque example of how cruel and twisted I mean,
(13:33):
that's again, that's human terms. Cruel and twisted nature really is.
Like it's kind of a wake up call where we're like, whoa,
this is not kittens and puppies here. This is a
parasite eating a creature's tongue and then becoming its tongue,
and the fishes, if not totally fine with it, the
fish at least is like yeah, like you said, it's
better than having no tongue at all. There you go. Yeah, yeah,
(13:55):
But I do think it's interesting how overfishing is certainly
something that is helping along in this creature that more, um,
the evolution of small fish is actually occurring. And then
of course as small fish can't really defend themselves and
so they were being taken over by this iopod. Yeah,
it's I mean, it's just another example of how you
have any kind of unbalancing of an ecological system and
(14:18):
of the natural habitat, things are going to get out
of whack. And when they get out of whack, that
might mean monsters living inside the heads of bunches of fishes, right,
and then eventually humans just being taken over as well. Yeah,
so there you have it, the parasite that wanted to
become a tongue. Anyone out there who's seen the movie
(14:39):
The Bay and wants to share their thoughts in the
film with us, we'd certainly love to hear about that.
I'm actually more interested in it now because I remember
seeing some posters for it, or like a trailer for it,
and I was like, you know, I'm not really looking
for another found footage horror film right now, and you know,
it wasn't all that interesting. But then I found out
that Barry Levinson is the director of the film. Uh.
(15:00):
There was something on tree Hugger about I think it
was an interview with Barry Levinson, and I think he
said that he first approached this material because he was
pitched um for as a documentary and over fishing, and um,
you know what happens, we need to disturb the ecosystem.
And so I think that's kind of funny that he
(15:20):
took Now, he didn't just say, oh, this would make
a great Hollywood movie. I think that his point was
that people pay attention more to the more fantastical elements
of it, perhaps people would take home that message that
this was really about an environmental concern as opposed to
doing a documentary that some people wouldn't watch. Yeah, and
for those of you aren't familiar with Darry Levinson, this
(15:41):
guy is mostly known for stuff like high Anxiety rain Man.
He's not really a horror guy. Um no. But but
the reviews for were actually pretty interesting, it seems like
most reviews. And it's always hard with horror movies to
tell to go buy reviews because not all movie reviewers
are really going to get the genre. And then sometimes
it's easy to go into a horror movie with the
(16:03):
wrong expectations. But the consistents seem to be that it
was maybe not as scary as one might want a
horror film about tongue parasites to be, but it was
very uh, it really sucked you in. It was very
very interesting in thought provoking. So there you go. I
would be interested to hear I have not seen it,
but I would love to hear from people who have. Indeed,
(16:25):
and if you want to reach out to us about
that or anything else parasites in general, other gross parasites
that you've found that you think we should do an
episode on You can find us on Facebook and you
can find us on tumbler. We are stuff to blow
your mind on both of those and if you head
on over to Twitter, our twitter handle is blow the Mind.
And also wanted to give a quick shout out to
our sister podcast, Pop Stuff. Make sure to give them
(16:46):
a listen. They are a newer kid on the block,
but they are well worth your time. And in fact,
I think that you have mentioned before that they've done
an outstanding podcasts on clowns and that's all as well
as myriad topics. Oh yeah, they cover clowns, they cover
Twilight vampires. I mean it's a They have a great
collection of episodes to ben Jon certainly as you travel
(17:07):
around this holiday season with your bellies full of food
and potentially your skull full of parasite. So check them
out and uh, if you'd like to drop us a line,
please do so at blow the Mind at Discovery dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(17:29):
Is it how Stuff works dot com Brought to you
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you
Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind?
From how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Julie Douglas. We are recording this just before Thanksgiving
(00:25):
and you will get to listen to it sometime after Thanksgivings.
So for those of you who engage in this holiday
of culinary excess, then you will you'll probably be stuffed
a bit, You'll be kind of filled with food. So
this podcast is for you to to to maybe help
with your digestion, to maybe make you think, well, maybe
I don't have it that bad after all, it could
have been worse, or or maybe you may end up
(00:47):
thinking I could have had a little more help eating
that food than I actually had, because you probably had
to do most of the chewing and swallowing and manipulating
of the food in your mouth all by your lonesome.
That's right. So we're going to bring you a little
topic today. That's think of it as a palate cleanser,
or as you say, an aid uh. In your next
foray into culinary indulgence. We are talking specifically about a
(01:11):
tongue eating parasite, yes, sigh motha exegua, which we will
now refer to as the I pod. Yes, the I pod.
This is a fantastic creature. If you have not seen
a picture of this, go to the blog post that
we're gonna put out to go along with this episode.
You'll see some photos or some links to some photos
some of that video to to reacquaint yourself with this
(01:34):
parasite that essentially, spoiler takes the place of a fish's tongue.
It is actually when there's things that's like truth is
stranger than fiction because it's very hard to I think,
dream up this creature, but here it is. Yeah, and
don't to my knowledge, no one had dreamed this one
up before. Um, you know we everyone loves a good
parasite in a horror movie. Stuff busting out of chess,
(01:55):
living in people's blood, I mean, you name it, they've
done it. Like, but this sounds something like the only
thing in fiction that I can think of is it
sounds like something that they would have made up for
Invader Zim. Like it's that level of just twisted, but
also like it's it's gross and dark, but also kind
of silly in a way. Oh yes, it's very silly. Well,
let's get into the meat of it, as it were
(02:17):
in topic, Yeah, the tongue meat of it. Let's describe
what this, this pod crustacean is, all right, Well, outside
of its eventual home inside of a fish's face, it's
a one inch long isopod, which is like a crustacean,
all right, it's kin. It's close at kin that most
of us I think will be familiar with is a
little thing called a pillbug, or we always call them
(02:38):
roly polis, those little little segmented because they're they're segmented,
kind of like a little armored dudes, right, much like
the roly poli, the pillbug that when you poke it
with your finger when you find it outside, it rolls
up into a ball. So it's kin to that. And
it looks a lot like that, except it's pale, one
inch long, lives in the water, shell covered, leggy, segmented,
and on its underside it has dozens of sharp, cruel
(03:00):
looking claws. Yeah, and it reminds me kind of like
a cockroach, even though it's it's much more segmented. It's
just opaque, white and very legging in appearance. As you say,
it's it's got the claws, particularly that it's got two
big claws sticking out, and you know, it's got a
pretty prominent face and eyes, which is very disturbing. Yeah,
(03:21):
because it's not only that you peer inside of fish's
mouth and you see a creature, because you wouldn't necessarily
register that it's a creature. You see like a white
lump that looks kind of like a tongue, but it
has eyes and it's staring at you. And they can
be found in the Gulf of California south to north
of the Gulf of guy a Quill in Ecuador, and
(03:44):
it's also been found off the coast of California and
New Jersey as well as off the coast in the UK.
So it's been kind of popping up in different places
that people did not expect. And we'll talk a little
bit more about that later on the podcast, but let's
get down to the nitty gritty of out how it
does what it does, how it actually takes over the
tongue of the fish. Yeah, so it starts out, of course,
(04:08):
on the outside of a fish. It's just swimming around.
It's yeah, and then it comes up to a snapper
all right, goes into the gills and into the creature's mouth,
and then it latches onto the tongue. So it's first
big feast, of course, is it's gonna start drinking some
tongue blood. It's nutritious, it's readily available, and there's not
(04:29):
a lot of room, you know, in amount, like think
of your own mouth, like just it's kind of a
horrifying thought, but you know, you just feel your tongue
setting there in your skull all the time. You know,
I don't move it just a lot. And it's kind
of gross, you know, because it's just this lump that
lives in your mouth. So the ice apot is think
what's not really thinking. But if I can antromomorphize it
(04:49):
a little bit, it's like it says, Hey, this place
is great. I just need to move this guy out
the tongue. And I can get this guy out of
here because the tongue is like, the tongue's got a
pretty good deal. It's just setting here in the mouth,
foods passing by. If I get rid of the tongue,
I can totally steal that job. I can do it
just as well as the slump of tongue can do,
and then I'll have access to food. And so it
(05:11):
cozies up to the tongue artery it begins to drain
it until the tongue starts to wither away in atrophy.
And that's when the fish decides that excuse me on
the fish with the iypod decides that it is going
to hang out and act as the tongue for the fish.
And when I think it's fascinating about this is that
it does kind of start out as sort of like
(05:32):
tiny sea lice, and then as you say, it does
attach itself to the gills and um, it begins to
develop and then the female is the one that makes
it its way to the tongue and it really takes
up residents and by that time it is full grown.
It is this creature living in the mouth of the fish.
And we've talked about symbiotic relationships in nature before, but
(05:55):
this is one of those situations where you kind of
have to wonder, you know, is this mutualism or is
it truly parasitism because the fish can still live and
we've talked before, I mean even even in situations where
we think something's a straight up parasite situation or straight
up mutualism situation, it's often not that cut and dry.
It's there's a whole lot of gray area. And even
(06:17):
with something like this, which on the surface sounds pretty parasitic,
like if something crawled into my mouth, ate my tongue
and replaced it, I'd be a little upset and and
a little insulted. But but but you would probably say
to yourself, an isopod tongue is better than no tongue
at all. Right, Well, maybe certainly we'll get into this more,
but I mean, certainly people can get used to a
(06:38):
lot of weirdness with their body over time. Maybe maybe
this is one of those things. But I mean, for starters.
Two three study found that fish with the parasites in
their mouth they did have lower blood counts than the
ones that still had tongues in tag. So it's clear
that they are drinking some blood in there. They are
actively engaging in some blood drinking. But then the other
thing is that, yes, they are eating food that comes
(07:02):
through the mouth as well. Yeah, and they did even
say that when when the I pod is in there,
that it will act as the tongue and actually kind
of trap the prey, as a tongue would against the
teeth and help out the fish in that instance, if
the totally making me rethink all the things my tongue does.
You don't think of your tongue is a creature, but
it kind of is. It's just it's like the guardian
(07:24):
that lives in your mouth and chases after bits of Twizzler.
Twizzler again, huh, you're still on the Twizzler kick. Well,
it's just it's probably the tongue's greatest enemy. You know,
there's a lot of war between that, because the twizzler
latches onto the tooth and then the tongue goes in
and battles it for like an hour. That and those
little gummy things, any really hard ones, the dots, I'm
(07:45):
not familiar with them. They're they're pretty rough. Well okay,
So if an isopod was actually replacing the human tongue,
what sort of relationship do you think it would have
with a toothbrush? Um? I guess it depend how much
tongue brushing you do. You're supposed to do a certain
amount of tongue brushing, right, I don't think it would
take kindly to that. I don't think it would either.
(08:07):
I think it would be an adversary. All right. So
what I think is really fascinating about this about this
isopod taking the place of the tongue, is that this
is the first known case of a parasite that actually
replaces an organ of its host. So, I mean, it's
phenomenal to see this. It's it's you know, spectacular looking,
but the fact of the matter that it is taking
(08:29):
over an organ in the actual host is is pretty cool. Yeah,
because like we said, it gets in there, and it's
not just a situation where it says, I'm where the
tongue is now, I'm gonna eat all the food. I'm
gonna run this show. It actually behaves like a tongue.
It actually helps pass food back to the to its host.
Like it's not it's not just gonna want to kill
a tongue. It's got a pretty good deal going, but
(08:50):
it needs to make sure some food gets through for
it to continue this strange existence. And then, like you said,
the parasite is replacing an organ and and you just
don't see this anywhere else in the known animal world.
It would be like if a parasite came up to
you and said, that's a pretty good eyeball you've got there,
I can do just as well. Let me eat that
(09:12):
eyeball and take its place. You know. It's like it's
that level of just it's crazy like nature. Again. Nature
is stranger and more twisted than anything we come up
with in our own horror on the side. That's the
truth right there, because it really is horrific looking, all right.
So we had mentioned that this pod has been popping
up in unusual places like the coast of the UK,
(09:35):
and scientists think that the reason for this is connected
to over fishing. Yeah, Like, it's worth noting that we've
known about this for a while, Like I've blogged about
it a few years back, and people have known of
this creature for even even longer. I probably around the
first time someone was like, what is in that fish is? Now?
So it's there's nothing new about it, but it is
(09:56):
rare to find a live example of it, and we've
certainly found more of them in recent years, which leads
credence to this idea that we're actually seeing more instances
of this parasite. There's more of it out there and
in one possibility here is that it all comes down
to over fishing. Carl Zimmerman did a piece on this
for Discover magazine. Of course, he's the author of the
(10:17):
book Parasite rex so he's all about looking at what
parasites are doing and how parasites are are changing and
involving in particularly. Who's looking at a study that looked
at one population off the coast of France where fish
were living in a protected marine environment, and then they
looked at another marine environment off the coast of Italy
that is heavily fished and in protected waters. The scientists
(10:38):
found of the fish had parasites in their mouth in
the fish waters dead. So that's a sevent increase in
the heavily fished areas well. You know what's crazy about
that is that nearly half of the fish, half of
the fish in those particular waters, have this creature in
(10:59):
their mouth. So you know what happens, of course, is
that every once in a while, some of these show
up in the grocery store. You know, you might get
a mackerel, you might be in Canada and get a
mackerel and then realize that you know, this creature is
staring at you and you just expected to jump out
into the spaceballs dance on the table, you know, because
it has that weird kind of cute little face like
(11:21):
it's like it does it does, which totally makes sense
about why the recent The Bay movie came out, which
is centered around this isopod. Yeah, I'm meant to try
and watch it because it's available right now for like
paid streaming on certain websites. They're doing that now where
it's something will be in the theater and then it's
almost instantly or instantly available elsewhere to stream. But yeah,
(11:44):
this this movie is like a found footage horror film
where it's due to an ecological disaster. Suddenly they're like
is pod rewired zombies running wild and people are freaking
out over it. Yeah. The idea is that these is
A pods mutate because they're exposed to a massive, massive
amount of steroid rich chicken waist, which somehow makes them
(12:06):
want to uh taste human flesh and then take over
a human. So of course we take this idea and
we try to figure out like the worst possible idea
of what could happen, and that would be if you,
Robert Lyn open your mouth right now and the little
iPod was talking to me, so of course this is
bunk though, right, this could never happen, right, This is
(12:26):
a creature for fish and off fish, so the chances
and it's just not gonna happen. It's this is not
Our bodies are not the habitat for this creature. But
if it did, I think we should give a listen
to what it might sound like if we were talking
to us. Hey there kid, how you doing yeah with
(12:50):
Jake last night? Yes, so that's hilarious. That's from a
little YouTube video which will also include on the blog
entry that accompanies this episode. But it's the ideas that
dude wakes up and he has the ice of pot
living in his mouth and it's bossing him around, which
I think would happen, right if they're going to do
adults or to adults, to humans, human adults. But again,
(13:11):
this is not something that could happen. And even if
you were to eat a fish, a mackerel that had
this parasite in it, you yourself would not become sick.
There's just really no health hazards to it. It's just
sort of disgusting to think about. But you know, we
can't help but think about it, because it is a
stunning and grotesque example of how cruel and twisted I mean,
(13:33):
that's again, that's human terms. Cruel and twisted nature really is.
Like it's kind of a wake up call where we're like, whoa,
this is not kittens and puppies here. This is a
parasite eating a creature's tongue and then becoming its tongue,
and the fishes, if not totally fine with it, the
fish at least is like yeah, like you said, it's
better than having no tongue at all. There you go. Yeah, yeah,
(13:55):
But I do think it's interesting how overfishing is certainly
something that is helping along in this creature that more, um,
the evolution of small fish is actually occurring. And then
of course as small fish can't really defend themselves and
so they were being taken over by this iopod. Yeah,
it's I mean, it's just another example of how you
have any kind of unbalancing of an ecological system and
(14:18):
of the natural habitat, things are going to get out
of whack. And when they get out of whack, that
might mean monsters living inside the heads of bunches of fishes, right,
and then eventually humans just being taken over as well. Yeah,
so there you have it, the parasite that wanted to
become a tongue. Anyone out there who's seen the movie
(14:39):
The Bay and wants to share their thoughts in the
film with us, we'd certainly love to hear about that.
I'm actually more interested in it now because I remember
seeing some posters for it, or like a trailer for it,
and I was like, you know, I'm not really looking
for another found footage horror film right now, and you know,
it wasn't all that interesting. But then I found out
that Barry Levinson is the director of the film. Uh.
(15:00):
There was something on tree Hugger about I think it
was an interview with Barry Levinson, and I think he
said that he first approached this material because he was
pitched um for as a documentary and over fishing, and um,
you know what happens, we need to disturb the ecosystem.
And so I think that's kind of funny that he
(15:20):
took Now, he didn't just say, oh, this would make
a great Hollywood movie. I think that his point was
that people pay attention more to the more fantastical elements
of it, perhaps people would take home that message that
this was really about an environmental concern as opposed to
doing a documentary that some people wouldn't watch. Yeah, and
for those of you aren't familiar with Darry Levinson, this
(15:41):
guy is mostly known for stuff like high Anxiety rain Man.
He's not really a horror guy. Um no. But but
the reviews for were actually pretty interesting, it seems like
most reviews. And it's always hard with horror movies to
tell to go buy reviews because not all movie reviewers
are really going to get the genre. And then sometimes
it's easy to go into a horror movie with the
(16:03):
wrong expectations. But the consistents seem to be that it
was maybe not as scary as one might want a
horror film about tongue parasites to be, but it was
very uh, it really sucked you in. It was very
very interesting in thought provoking. So there you go. I
would be interested to hear I have not seen it,
but I would love to hear from people who have. Indeed,
(16:25):
and if you want to reach out to us about
that or anything else parasites in general, other gross parasites
that you've found that you think we should do an
episode on You can find us on Facebook and you
can find us on tumbler. We are stuff to blow
your mind on both of those and if you head
on over to Twitter, our twitter handle is blow the Mind.
And also wanted to give a quick shout out to
our sister podcast, Pop Stuff. Make sure to give them
(16:46):
a listen. They are a newer kid on the block,
but they are well worth your time. And in fact,
I think that you have mentioned before that they've done
an outstanding podcasts on clowns and that's all as well
as myriad topics. Oh yeah, they cover clowns, they cover
Twilight vampires. I mean it's a They have a great
collection of episodes to ben Jon certainly as you travel
(17:07):
around this holiday season with your bellies full of food
and potentially your skull full of parasite. So check them
out and uh, if you'd like to drop us a line,
please do so at blow the Mind at Discovery dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(17:29):
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