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