You thought your boyfriend was clingy
Humans think of bondage as kinky. For some animals however bondage has become a biological necessity. Today I bring you a couple of examples of bondage in the animal kingdom.
Life for a blood fluke is a real gamble. First it has to find a host, in fact three hosts. Firstly its eggs hatch and the fluke larva infests a water snail. Then it takes up residence in a fish. Then a human eats the fish and it infests his or her blood stream.
So with all this moving about how does it find time for a love life? Unlike a lot of other parasites blood flukes have two separate sexes. When a blood fluke finds somebody to love it has to last because the chance of meeting someone else is slim. The male blood fluke has a long groove in its body called the Gynechophoral canal. When he meets a girl blood fluke she takes up residence in this groove (at this point Madonna starts singing “Get into the groove for you’ve got to prove your love to me,” before a shot rings out in the distance and she falls down dead). The lovebirds, err I mean loveworms, spend the rest of their days mating and laying eggs. These eggs end up in human crap, which in poorly sanitised areas ends up in rivers, and the cycle starts all over again. NOTE: this is a good reason not to eat raw fish in third world countries.
The deep-sea anglerfish has a similar problem and an even more bizarre way of solving it. Deep-sea anglers live way down deep in the ocean where no sunlight penetrates. This is probably a good thing because an anglerfish is not a very pretty sight and their love/sex life has problems that being physically repellent would only exacerbate (lack of alcoholic beverages not withstanding). The most obvious problem is finding a partner in pitch darkness. The other problem is the low population density of the deep-sea.
These problems are solved by the anglerfish’s bizarre way of attracting prey. The females have a lure that sticks out of their forehead that takes the form of a stem with a knob on the end that contains bacteria. These bacteria produce light in a process called bioluminescence in much the same way that a firefly does.
This lure not only attracts prey but also the male anglerfish (which is much smaller than the female). The shape of the lure is different for each species of anglerfish so that the male doesn’t waste his time on a girl that just isn’t his type. Now here is the weird bit. He doesn’t fit into a groove on the female’s body, as is the case with blood fluke. The male actually fuses to the female.
He digs his teeth into the female and starts to feed off her blood supply. The male begins to change. He loses his eyes and his blood supply fuses to the female’s blood supply. He loses all of his internal organs and his testes grow large in accordance with his primary and only function (at this point the Spice Girls start singing “When two become one,” until they realise they are a bunch of has-beens that can only get publicity by being the trophy wives of famous soccer stars who ‘have it off’ with every woman in sight besides them...allegedly).
So there you have it, bondage in the animal kingdom without all the handcuffs, leather and scary moustaches associated with human bondage.
Until next time think of the deep-sea anglerfish before you tell your partner that they’re too clingy.
Keeping it Surreal,
Toblerone J. Aardvark