Parasitic Fish
cwilcox | March 23, 2009If you've ever watched a National Geographic or Discovery Channel special on the deep sea, you know just about everything that lives in the dark part of the ocean is a Sci-Fi writers dream. The species are so diverse and strange that even the best thought-out aliens hardly hold a candle to the bizarre life that lives in the deep. They have fish with lighted lures, strange, colorless creatures, octopuses that resemble elephants, and, of course, this week's parasite.
The Cookie Cutter Shark, Isistius brasiliensis
Imagine you're in the deep. You look above you, and contrasting the very, very…
cwilcox | February 13, 2009Happy Valentine's Day! Though, I doubt this post fits well into your lovely romantic images of the day...
I promised another vertebrate, so here it is, a parasite so cruel it's sure to make you cringe: The Candiru.
It looks innocent enough. It's a little catfish. Heck, it's so little it's known as the "toothpick fish", and yet it's more feared in the Amazon River than the fierce Piranha.
To understand why, you have to understand what this parasitic catfish does. It's intended hosts are other fish. When it finds a host, it burrows its head in to its gills and eats the blood, tissues, or mucus…