Just One More Reason to Heart Angler Fish

"Angler fish males exist, but they are tiny and are called "dwarf males." These angler fish males are incapable of independent existence. They have large nostrils for homing in on perfumes released by the females and pinchers, instead of teeth, to grasp little projections on the female. After a male attaches to the back or side of a female, their epidermal tissues fuse and their circulatory systems unite, and the male becomes an organ of the female... They thereby turn into two or more genetically distinct individuals in one body, a colony." (44)
[Emphasis WAY the hell mine]

(from Joan Roughgarden's Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality
in Nature and People)

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