Species: Phallostethus cuulong
Habitat: surface waters of the Mekong River in Vietnam
The male fish, a Phallostethus
cuulong just 2 centimetres long, weaves between drifting vegetation in the
sluggish waters of a canal. He closes in on a female, swims alongside her and
tries to mate with her. But to an outside
observer, he seems to be doing it wrong. His head is right next to the
female's, but he's at a 45-degree angle so his rear end is well below hers.
Sounds misguided, but actually he's doing it exactly right – it's just that his
gonads are on his head.
This is the
challenge faced by all priapiumfish, a little-known group of Asian fish that
have their reproductive organs on their chins, just behind their mouths. How
does this Cronenbergian arrangement work?
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