{"id":187643,"date":"2011-04-15T19:18:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-16T00:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/04\/15\/nature-is-beautiful\/"},"modified":"2011-04-15T19:18:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-16T00:18:00","slug":"nature-is-beautiful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/04\/15\/nature-is-beautiful\/","title":{"rendered":"Nature is Beautiful"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I give you <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cymothoa_exigua\">Cymothoa exigua<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><b>Cymothoa exigua<\/b><\/i>, or the <b>tongue-eating louse<\/b>, is a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Parasite\" title=\"Parasite\">parasitic<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Crustacean\">crustacean<\/a> of the family <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cymothoidae\">Cymothoidae<\/a>. It tends to be 3 to 4 centimetres (1.2 to 1.6 in) long. This parasite enters through the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gill\" title=\"Gill\">gills<\/a>, and then attaches itself at the base of the spotted rose snapper&#8217;s (<i><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lutjanus\" title=\"Lutjanus\">Lutjanus<\/a> guttatus<\/i>) tongue. It extracts blood through the claws on its front, causing the tongue to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Atrophy\">atrophy<\/a>  from lack of blood. The parasite then replaces the fish&#8217;s tongue by  attaching its own body to the muscles of the tongue stub. The fish is  able to use the parasite just like a normal tongue. It appears that the  parasite does not cause any other damage to the host fish. Once <i>C. exigua<\/i>  replaces the tongue, some feed on the host&#8217;s blood and many others feed  on fish mucus. This is the only known case of a parasite functionally  replacing a host organ.<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cymothoa_exigua#cite_note-Brusca-0\">&nbsp; <\/a>It is currently believed that <i>C. exigua<\/i> are not harmful to humans unless picked up alive, in which case they can bite<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>H\/t <a href=\"http:\/\/atrios.blogspot.com\/\">Atrios<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I give you Cymothoa exigua: Cymothoa exigua, or the tongue-eating louse, is a parasitic crustacean of the family Cymothoidae. It tends to be 3 to 4 centimetres (1.2 to 1.6 in) long. This parasite enters through the gills, and then attaches itself at the base of the spotted rose snapper&#8217;s (Lutjanus guttatus) tongue. It extracts &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[962,1083,1069,1015],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-40yrs","category-friday-blogging","category-science","category-weird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}