Gharial

The gharial is the strangest o’ the crocodilians, and let us face it they are a strange bunch… don’t believe me? Have some round for sherry… I assure you it will be an unforgettable evening.

Right… the gharial… smashing fellow… somehow these cads, along with the rest of the crocodiles, lived through the cataclysm that wiped the best part of the dinosaurs of the face of the earth. Which is smashing news as we still have this delightful chap around. Though we still don’t know how the dinosaurs were bundled off the face of the earth in the first place. Of course the most likely theory is that a huge lump of rock belted into the planet and indeed there is the evidence of a huge strike around Chixculub in Mexico… not to mention a load of asteroid gubbins found all round the planet in a layer at a certain point in time… so for sakes of argument we are sticking with this space rock chappy for now.

... i'd say!

This would make a lot of sense as to how we are lucky enough to have the rather smashing gharial with us these days. We do know that after said asteroid hit the planet virtually all plant life would have been put on hold as the Sun was blotted from the sky. This wouldn’t have boded too well for the herbivores either, who not surprisingly kicked the bucket. The predators would have been soon a goner after their vegetarian chums were wiped out. However animals that eat rotten and dead herbivores and predators would have thought it a rather smashing time to be an animal that eats rotten and dead stuff, they’d found it rather difficult to find a bistro to their tastin for a rather long time now… and so they all had a bit of a shindig. Similarly animals that live in streams and rivers wouldn’t have been as badly affected as they are more dependent on bits and bobs being washed downstream than anything else. Which two factors would have suited the crocodiles rather well, as they live in streams and would eat the scabs off a scabby donkey if they were even a trifle peckish.

Well most of them eat any old bobbins; the gharial has had plenty of time to evolve into something much more sophisticated since then. No he doesn’t have an impeccable knowledge of the wines of Bordeaux and he is said to be awful at the Charleston…. he has actually evolved into a remarkably sophisticated fish eater.

... i'll have the sauteed dover sole with the hollandaise sauce

Up to six and a half meters long, he is not a wee chap this most aquatic of the crocodilians… what’s more he is really rather suited to the wet stuff. Not surprising then he eats fish, too fast for most crocs, but not for the gharial. That is why he has this huge long thin snout, rammed full of razor sharp teeth. He lies in wait with these toothy swords ajar and when a fishy dishy pops by… snap! The gharial is much faster than his lunking great cousins too, helped by the thin snout which cuts through the water like an oar on its side. If his snappy trap isn’t working he’ll use his flat paddle like tail to slip through the streams, or to whack unsuspecting fish on to the riverbank to scrobble down on.

The male has a ‘pot’ or ‘ghara’ at the end of the snout which grows with maturity. It is used to make hissing noises and apparently is used to blow bubbles which the fillies find quite delightful.

one can even pop pipe tobacco in it...

Rather unusual I’m sure you’ll agree.

Tawny Frogmouth

No he is not an owl, he’s nothing like those big loveable oafs… say a very warm hallo to the tawny frogmouth!

Hurrah!

Yes we suppose this chap does have a passing resemblance to an owl… an owl with a wide frog-like mouth… an owl crossed with a frog… ooh they should call it something owly-coloured frog featu… oh… hmmm… quite… this chap lives in Australia, including Tasmania and there are a few in Southern New Guinea. Though the frogmouths look like owls they are actually more closely related to the nightjars and oilbirds.

Old frog features sits in the forest at night and, well, just sits there waiting for insects to bob by. If an insect is unlucky enough to tootle past this big feathery frog-mouthed dustbin they quickly wish they hadn’t. He is a ‘sit and wait’ predator, a bit like a kingfisher sitting on a riverbank, though he is not about to get wet. Those wispy whiskery feathers around his gob are thought to detect anything that would rather not be chomped on… and help the tawny frogmouth to quickly go about ruining their day by chomping on them. Yes we know, owls eat things in the night too… but owls go about their night-time dining quite differently, they scour large areas looking for prey to skewer with their rather vicious looking feet, rather than sit on a branch waiting for something to bimble past their enormous gob.

...3 ...2 ...1... coming ready or not!

The tawny frogmouth’s camouflage is tip-top and they exhibit a behaviour known as ‘stumping’. Though to refer to looking like a tree stump as a ‘behaviour’ is possibly a misnomer, more of a doing nothing… an anti-behaviour. Animals tend to avoid being flamboyant; which is why one rarely sees them jauntily bobbing down a street in their college blazer, loudly whistling ‘Rule Brittania’ while twirling a cane. Being all visible tends to get them into the belly of something bigger than them, or if they are big it tends to make little things avoid going anywhere near them and hence ending up in their belly… and so our animal chums have worked out all sorts of clever ways of not being visible… this is what we call crypsis.

Of course camouflage is one method, and the tawny frogmouth is an expert in this field; its feathers look exactly like tree bark. There are many other ways in which an animal may try to remain unseen or in a state of ‘crypsis’ including; only coming out at night, living underground, being see through or even doing nothing.

frogmouths?... haven't seen any, just us stumps here

Doing nothing may seem an odd way to react, especially to something that is going to eat you, however it is a rather good way of not getting seen; predators on the whole are on the look out for things that … well do things. Again it is where owls differ…. they are renowned for doing things… flying about… bothering mice… looking for things that are doing things… hooting and hollering… hollering and hooting.

Owls are often doing all this hollering and hooting, generally because they are renowned imbeciles. Their huge eyes leave very little space for the grey stuff, what’s more a big slice of their tiny owly minds are devoted to processing the huge amounts of information their incredible eyes and ears pick up. Frogmouths as we know take it a bit easier, though these feathered bins have noticed that insects are attracted to those new fangled electric lamps… the problem being these new fangled electric lamps are often attached to the front of these new fangled motor cars… a behaviour which is surely about to become a rather quick lesson in survival of the fittest for these silly chaps. Aaaah finally yes something very owl-like about this character… he is an utter buffoon… and we love him for it!

Bonobo

This tremendous little fellow is often thought of as the ‘forgotten’ ape Pan paniscus; the pygmy chimpanzee. What this whippersnapper lacks in stature he more than makes up for in the trouser department, as these are possibly the most promiscuous creatures on the planet.

a perverse and deeply depraved erotic adventurer

Invariably when people speak of chimps they are talking about the bonobo’s cousin the common chimpanzee, but this chap is actually a separate species who also lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The bonobo’s appearance is slightly different, their legs are relatively longer and they find it easier to stand, they have a darker face, pink lips and long hair in a centre parting…. is anyone picturing Queen Victoria right now or is it just me? The bonobo live south of the Congo, their more famous cousins are found North of the great river, and it was only in 1939 that they were discovered, three centuries after all the other great apes. Incidentally when early explorers first discovered the great apes of the Congo they assumed that they were in fact human and strolled right up to them to have a bit of a chinwag… presumably to try and find out where one could find a passable gin and tonic in the area.

of course i came for the free love and yoga

On to the obscene, you see the bonobo like to have sex all the time; mothers with fathers, fathers with mothers, mothers with mothers, sons with sisters, sisters with sisters, fathers with fathers, mothers… oh you get the point, basically everyone with anyone with the possible exception of mothers with sons… what do you think they are? Perverts or something?

Like many animals they are not afraid of a bit of homosexuality either. Male bonobos will hang from branches and ‘frot’ or ‘penis-fence’, or stand back to back and rub their scrotums together. Females on the other hand will scissor… I’ll leave that one to your imagination.

You see in bonobo-world having sex is just their way of getting along better and to say sorry. What is more it is their way of saying hello, how do you do and isn’t the weather much the same as yesterday as we live in equatorial Africa. When you live in a tribe of a hundred horny little chimps that is a lot of bedroom athletics to get through. They even have sex when they find a new food source… it is literally fair to say the bonobo have sex at the drop of a peanut.

come and say hello to your great aunty Doris..

One more thing about this naughty chimp, and one can only apologize to all our lady readers for all this lasciviousness, but the bonobo is quite simply the only other creature on the planet that goes for face to face sex, tongue kissing and oral sex. Apart from a single pair of gorillas that is, but all the other gorilla’s avoided them because they were a bit ‘funny’.

What is perhaps most human, and they really are “most human” being more closely related to us than they are to gorillas, is the bonobo’s compassionate nature. Learned types have stated the bonobo is capable of altruism, empathy, kindness, patience and sensitivity. In fact it is often mused that perhaps the chimps would be much better in the same genus as humans; Homo paniscus perhaps or even we humans could be reclassified as Pan sapiens. Of course no-one has ever asked a bonobo what they would like, they’d probably have to have a think about it… over a nice bit of rumpy-pumpy.

Ant-Decapitating Flies

These tiny tiny flies are actually gruesome killing machines… what is more they WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAINS, well they do if you happen to be a type of South American ant which I grant is unlikely as you would probably be reading a Spanish or Quechuan marvellous menagerie or some such… and would probably have difficulty with the pages… actually that would be the least of your problems if you had an ant decapitating fly on your hands.

BRRRRRAAAAAAIIIINNNNNSSSSS

These zombie flies come from a diverse bunch of flies known as the scuttle flies… so called because… yes quite you’ve seen them scuttling around then… smashing.

What these ant decapitating scuttle flies do is jump on the back of some hapless ant, stab it with their ovipositor and stick an egg into the poor sod… the egg quickly develops into a larvae and wriggles up the body and into the head. There the hungry maggot chows down on the brain until it is entirely gobbled up. Remarkably the ant, while having to take a bit more time over The Times cryptic crossword these days, is still able to walk and do other menial chores. Of course if this was done to you or I we would a) be very unhappy about it b) be quite dead… and therefore probably not really mind that much about it. Ants however have a number of ganglion down their back that act as miniature brains.

... and the winner of the fancy dress competition iiiiisss...

After the ant decapitating fly larvae has been bimbling around in the ant’s head for about two weeks, having a merry old time enjoying the view and the cuisine, the fly larvae releases an enzyme that dissolves through the muscles in the back of the ant’s head. Of course the ant’s head bobs off, and the larvae has a bit of a snooze pupating to work off the delicious lunch he’s had. A couple of weeks later and after a bit of a costume change off he flies to go and bother some other poor sod.

The ant decapitating flies are part of the rather diverse Phoridae family of flies. A group containing the rather gruesome group the coffin flies that feast on the human remains inside their final resting places, scurrying six feet through the soil for a bit of a mange, they include the omnivorous species Megaselia scalaris who will happily eat virtually anything… plants, open wounds on any animal, living lung tissue, even boot polish and paint.

pull yourself together man

Though it is the ant-decapitating zombie fly that we have in our hearts… though thankfully not in our heads. The ants that they bother, mainly in the tropics, no doubt keep them in a lower esteem. The lengths that these ants go to to avoid having their brain eaten are remarkable… though quite understandable. Some species of leaf cutter ant have even gone to the measure of having an escort, one to carry the leaf one to tussle with the ant decapitating flies.

Pygmy Hippopotamus

Hippopotamuses… tough is not the word… everyone knows them for their man-squishing temper tantrums… though few know that their hide is so thick they are bullet proof and what’s more they can bimble around on any terrain… put quite simply they have evolved into the biological equivalent of a tank. Then there is Choeropsis liberiensis, the pygmy hippo… the anti-hippo.

The common hippo is renowned for its ferocity, often cited as the most dangerous animal in Africa. Of course the mosquito is a far more dangerous animal than the hippo, though I know which one I’d rather tackle with a newspaper. While the hippo will think nothing at having a go at eating a boat or causing a ruckus through farms and villages… the pygmy hippo thinks all this rampaging quite tiresome… not least because he’s knee high and would be frankly abominable at the chore. It would probably be safer to say the common hippo is the most ferocious animal in Africa. It is aggressive and invasive. The mosquito is more of a silent assassin, but enough of him he’s such a whiner.

The pygmy hippo on the other hand is a rather rare hippo from western Africa. The other living species of hippo, the common hippo is much bigger… ah quite, yes and more common. Hippopotamus means “river horse” in Greek, the locals call the pygmy hippo the “river pig” but the actual family tree of the hippos is a tad more smashing than that. Their closest living relatives are in fact the cetaceans; the whales and dolphins. Which makes sense when you think about it really… a water living fatso and all that.

Africa's most fearsome creature...

Interestingly hippos, despite spending 90% of their time in the water, can’t swim. To get around in the water they simply sink to the bottom of the river and skedaddle along the bottom. The pygmy hippo spends a lot more time on dry land. To stop getting sunburn both types of hippo actually secrete sunscreen, or “blood sweat” as it has rather gruesomely become known. It is neither blood nor sweat but is a highly alkaline substance that turns pink in sunlight, it’s also a rather effective antibacterial agent.

Pygmy hippos are smaller and spend more time on land. They have a sloped back allowing them to pass through the bush more effectively, they merrily mark their path by pooing while using their tiny wee tail to scatter the stuff all over… again like their bigger cousin. For this reason that they are one of the few retromingent animals… they urinate backwards.

the pygmy hippo... not far away

Of course the point I’m very slowly getting round to is that the pygmy hippo is not a chubby sociopath with a head swimming in blood lust, in fact they are quite the opposite of the aggressive common hippo. They are adorable tubby lumps who are just begging for a scratch under the chin, unfortunately you’d be lucky to give the wee chap a tickle in the wild, not just because they are very rare, they are very shy… and though no doubt they’d appreciate the scratch they are quite frankly avoiding that big dangerous cousin of theirs.

Caecilian

The caecilian is the yummiest mummy you will ever meet, she’s rather attractive, has a great pair of lungs on her, and she likes a good root…

… sorry just pouring out a Scotch… where were we… ah yes she likes a good root around underground… spending much of her time deep in soil.

Though caecilians look like a liquorice whip had a rather racy night with an earthworm they are in fact amphibians, yes quite… like frogs and salamanders. You’d be forgiven in thinking that you haven’t seen this filly around either as they are rather elusive, as we mentioned they spend the best part of their life underground. Not surprisingly they are rather short-sighted and can only just make out the difference between light and dark.

The caecilians grow up to one and a half metres long and all but one species have a pair of lungs… one lung is bigger than the other so it fits better in that lithe yummy mummy body… indeed the snakes have similar odd shaped lungs. The single caecilian species that doesn’t have lungs is rather a small chap, he doesn’t need lungs as he can get enough oxygen deep enough into his weeny system through his amphibious skin.

Oooh right… yes marvellous… this is the perfect time to discuss an honorary member of The Proceedings; J.B.S Haldane. Professor Haldane is perhaps most famous for his principle, put simply; body size defines what body bits an animal needs. Take for example air-breathing systems; tiny insects can take in oxygen in through their skin from their surrounds, but large mammals have had to develop incredibly complex lung and circulatory systems to get oxygen to their nether regions. So as Haldane’s principle predicts; a big caecilian has had to evolve lungs and a little one has in fact done away with them.

J.B.S. Haldane: Legend

While we’re on the subject the second thing that J.B.S. Haldane was known for is being a bon vivant… he really was a smasher and is dearly missed by us all. Once asked what he felt God must be like he quipped he must have ”An inordinate fondness for beetles” referring to the fact that about 25% of all known living things on the planet are beetles. Later, in a series of rather dangerous experiments on himself, he perforated an eardrum and afterwards stated quite matter of factly “the drum generally heals up; and if a hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question… which is a social accomplishment.” Marvellous fellow!

Right where were we… aaah yes the rather wonderful caecilia… aaah on to nuptials… we usually get around to this sooner or later. The caecilians are the only amphibian that have a penis-like organ… apart from a rather happy looking frog that lives in fast flowing streams. After all the rumpy pumpy the caecilians give birth to live young, and this is where the yummy mummy part comes in… as the wee ones like nothing less than eating their mother. Yes these little wrigglers begin in the womb, chomping away at the womb lining, some species even continue to eat their mother after they are born… tearing chunks from her skin and greedily gobbling them down… as we were saying the caecilian… a really really yummy mummy.

Sifaka

Meet one of the most dapper chaps on the planet, granted he doesn’t get his shirts from Jermyn St… nor does he know that a fine Harris tweed is of course unsurpassed as poor weather attire… but he does know a thing or two about grooming… say good day to the Sifaka.

We could learn something from this clean-cut primate… one can feel drunk on power from the crispness of the crease of a pair of trousers, actually to be fair mostly from this gin, but at least some giddiness from sartorial elegance.

Sifakas are a type of lemur, a smashing bunch of animals from Madagascar, yes like the Aye Aye. Madagascar said toodlepip to Africa ninety million years ago, while dinosaurs were still skedaddling around the planet. The lemurs separated from the rest of the primates (you, me, chimpanzees, creationists etc) about 55 million years ago. They diversified and filled all the ecological niches that the lovely tropical paradise of Madagascar had to offer them… until man turned up and thought them quite tasty.

Their name is onomatopoeic, that is to say their name is the name of the noise they make; like a cuckoo, a splosh, a quack or indeed a zip. The sifaka, who despite being a dapper primate hasn’t cottoned on to onomatopoeic universal fasteners, lives on the western side of the island and makes a noise that sounds like ‘Shee-fak’, and so the tribes their call them sifaka. On the eastern side the sifaka make a noise much like a sneeze, and so the tribes their have given them a name that sounds much like a sneeze, of course this is mightily confusing for both the local tribes and the sifaka when it comes to cold season.

While most lemurs like to belt all over the place on all fours, the sifakas thought it much more refined to be a bit more… well upright… and are incredibly well adapted to bounding through the trees, in fact some hoof along at up to twenty odd miles an hour amidst the twigs and branches. Of course being mostly upright, and hoofing it through trees takes some skill. The sifaka manage this feat by leaping out from the trees, spinning 180degrees, and landing back face-first on the next tree up to 10 metres away. Being so well adapted to hoofing through branches means that they are rather ill adapted to crossing land, though they do their best… unfortunately doing their best looks like a cowboy, fresh from crossing the entire western plains heading towards a bar after a nut-kicking competition.

But why is he so dapper I hear you cry?

Well it turns out that he has a number of remarkable implements at his disposal to keep himself presentable. He has a toothcomb, highly adapted teeth that comb through his thick fur, to keep himself clean. What’s more he has a toilet claw which is used for… what it’s not for… aaaah! for gads sake… does that mean… I’m so sorry for wasting everyone’s time… I thought it was used for… ah never mind.

Right Whale

Everyone knows the story of the right whale, the whale the whalers thought was the right whale because… well it was the “right” whale to catch… well I’ll tell you something about this right whale chap… he’s just not right.

He’s certainly an odd looking fellow for starters, his huge mouth starts way above his eye… a gaping maw chock full of baleen to strip the water of tasty shrimp and the like. On that bonce are big bugger off callosities, sometimes appearing white because of the huge lice that congregate on them… though as Mrs Merrick said to her little boy ‘it’s not what is on the outside that counts’ and what shoves this fellow clicking and squeaking into the Proceedings of the Ever so Strange… is what is on the inside.

When you are dealing with whales it’s not exactly a huge leap of the imagination to realise that you are going to be dealing with some big body bits. Though there is one body bit in particular of the right whale that is really rather outsized. You see these chaps have enormous gonads… knackers… family jewels… call them what you will… one thing you can call them is bloody enormous… each one is five hundred kilos… together they weigh the same as a saloon car… though you wouldn’t want to clamber inside one for a family Sunday I’d warrant.

The right whale needs them too as the female right whale is… well something of a strumpet. When it comes to mating season the female right whale will… erm take on multiple partners at the same time. They are tremendously sensuous creatures and it’s said that the pressure of a human finger can give them a knee-trembler… if they hadn’t evolved their knees away. The right whales meet for these watery orgies and the males gather round to nuzzle and stroke the female for hours, then the males will enter her with their eight foot schlongs… it’s true that… how do we put this… she’ll allow them ‘in’ more than one at a time… after which the right whale all agree that they’ve had a merry old time and bimble off in to the big wet to find another orgy to attend.

All salacious gossip, and it’s just one of the reasons that female right whales don’t live in small villages and attend church… but there is also the tricksy laws of evolution here afoot… sexual selection. Postulated by Charlie Darwin… yes you are quite right… it’s the reason that males fight like rutting stags and show off like pompous peacocks. But combat and ornamentation are only two aspects of sexual selection… there are other shadowy goings on… one is sperm competition. Yes one way in which this never-ending tussle for more offspring is to continue the fight on to a microscopic level. As you’d expect nature has come up with a range of strategies to deal with this… the male dunnock bird pecks out his predecessors sperm before mounting the female… whereas dragonfly have evolved a penis that for all intents and purposes looks like a bottle cleaner to scrub out his predecessor’s love goo. Even humans have sperm competition and men will produce more of a type of ‘blocker’ sperm, like a defending footballer, if he suspects his missus is having it away with the milkman. The right whale has a much more simple method… to produce lots of sperm… from enormous testes… put quite simply he’s buying lots and lots of tickets in a lottery. I warned you that these chaps just aren’t right.

There are three species of these not-so-right whales who inhabit the Arctic and Antarctic, their populations spilt by a cold planet warming some millions of years ago. There is a forth… though not currently put in the right whale group… the much larger bowhead whale, a huge leviathan, it uses its great big bonce to smash through thick ice to draw a breath… as I mentioned it’s not usually placed in the right whale group but modern genetic studies have found there is more variation between the three species of right whale than there are betwixt them and the bowhead.

'I like big nuts and I cannot lie...'

Finally as I mentioned the whalers of yore were said to have given the right whale its name after the fact that it didn’t sink, though the truth is a tad more multifaceted than that. Early whalers were based on the land, lookouts would keep a constant vigil, and when whales were spotted they would give the signal for the other whalers to row out to spear the poor sods. The right whale is also a slow swimmer, so it’s not surprising the right whale was considered right by those having to row out and catch one. Finally these ‘right’ whales are indeed more likely to float than other whales once you’ve stuck a harpoon in the poor sod, at the absolute most only 30% would sink.

While it’s easy to point a finger at these whalers that decimated the right whale populations, it’s these ‘right’ characteristics that means it is still being killed today… they are constantly struck by propellers and crashed into by boats… which means that some species of these rather marvellous creatures are down in their hundreds… Sad news indeed and while it’s debatable whether this whale is right or not… we at The Proceedings can certainly tell you when something isn’t right.

Golden Rumped Elephant Shrew

Meet the golden rumped elephant shrew, owner of one of the most magnificent bottoms in the animal kingdom, world champion skedaddler and he’s not even a shrew… in fact he’s more elephant than shrew.

Magnificent!

Despite looking just like a shrew this fellow, like the rest of the elephant shrews and indeed the tree shrews, is not related… they don’t even get a card from the shrews at Christmas… yes quite it is that fellow convergent evolution we keep on going on about. It seems likely that the elephant shrews are closely related to the elephants, armadillos and hyrax but even that is debated.

Of course the elephant shrews have been so-called not because of modern genetic cladistic analyses to postulate phylogenetic trees… but because they’ve got a bally big trunk on their face. It uses this great big nose to root around in the leaf litter looking for tasties; grasshoppers, beetles and the like. It’s a bit of a bother when it does actually manage to eat something, to eat a worm it has to hold it with its foot, chew it on the side of its face… big nose remember… and then flick bits of worm into his mouth. No you are right he is dreadful company to take out for supper… though he is quite delightful company in all other respects.

no dear it's very flattering

Though it’s not his lineage or his manners that make this chap a real corker in The Proceedings of the Ever so Strange… it’s that he has evolved more ways of getting away from persuants than the French.

First off, if the predator is far enough away, he legs it… and at quite a speed… up to 25kmh, incredibly fast for such a wee chap.

If the golden rumped tree shrew is unfortunate enough to be too close to the predator he does something rather unusual. Instead of keeping his head down and trying to hide, he does quite the opposite, in fact he goes absolutely stark raving bonkers. He causes a right hullabaloo, slapping the leaf litter to make a racket… the idea is to send a message to the predator… goading it not to waste time attacking him… which apparently works some of the time. An unusual method of predator avoidance this may be, but it has been demonstrated a number of times and it’s about a show of fitness. Skylarks when being chased by a bird of prey will often sing, the message to the predator is ‘not only can I outrun you but I can do it with a little ditty’ and remarkably it has been shown that Merlin and the like give up the chase much quicker when the Skylark is singing. I can’t resist one more example of this demonstration of fitness; a type of Anolis lizard when he spots a snake will start doing push ups… the message is simple… not only can I see you but I’m in tip top condition and ready for a ruck.

In the event this demonstration of fitness doesn’t work… it’s wonder bottom to the rescue, the elephant shrew’s golden rump attracts attention, and as he scurries off through the undergrowth… the cad that’s trying to eat him will more often than not strike at his bedazzling rear… his rump is rather tough and so helps to stave off any blows. What’s more this elephant shrew’s bottom is so beguiling it means that the predator will go for it rather than its head, thus he’s much more likely to live.

His final tactic to stop from being eaten is to maintain a number of nests so that predators can never associate their nests with food.

A real roister doister I’m sure you’ll agree!

Tongue Eating Louse

The tongue-eating louse is the only example of a parasite that lives by crawling into another animal and after dispatching with a body part lives as a rather awkward replacement. It does so with relatively little harm to the poor bloody fish, though it is said the poor bloody fish rarely gets a smooch these days.

say aaaaah

He’s an unwanted guest, like some insufferable bugger from college who comes around and stays far too bloody long, at least he would be if that guest came in ate your chaise longue and quickly proceeded to decimate your wine cellar and didn’t leave until the day they died. The tongue-eating louse is quite possibly the most repugnant thing on the planet, worse than the Major’s wife and even a sniper wouldn’t take her out.

just a quick kiss... no no don't mind him

This louse is quite simply a monster, albeit a little one. The crustacean crawls into the gills of a fish, scrambles up to the mouth and stabs its claws either side of the fishes tongue. Despite its name it doesn’t actually eat the tongue, the organ atrophies as the parasite slurps the blood taking with it all the oxygen and nutrients and what not. There the louse sits for the rest of its life, why the blazes they never evolved to eat the tasty morsels the poor bloody fish is eating is anyone’s guess. One also wonders how they find this living-in-a-fishy mouth lifestyle satisfying.

... well on tuesdays i do Spanish classes... and on Thursdays I do salsa

So do we at The Proceedings wish we’d never mentioned the horrible buggers? Quite the opposite we think they are really rather grand! An incredible example of a pinnacle of evolution…. you see parasites rather obviously live off another animal to the hosts detriment. It’s a rather lazy, but devilishly clever survival technique that has arisen again and again independently throughout the course of evolution. It’s safe to say almost every single animal of any size has at least one. The really really clever, or more to the point the really well-evolved parasites, tap the hosts resources all the while leaving the host to live quite normally and hence as long as possible…. so that the parasite can tap more and more resources, and make more and more horrible little offspring. And we at The Proceedings can think of no other parasite that does it quite so well.

Indeed the closest we could think of is our own offspring, living off the nutrients of the blood of its mother, before popping out being a bit of a pain until you can eventually pack them off to a cripplingly expensive boarding school at the age of four. Which is at least some good news for the parents as they get back to smooching, a smooch that contains millions of micro-organisms, some of which are parasites.