Anglerfish Drop Their Immune Defenses to Find Love

Love can leave us defenseless, but for some species of deep sea anglerfish letting their guard down for new romance is in their genes. New research finds that evolution has actually eliminated an integral part of the ghoulish fish's immune system to make sure that when they find a mate, nothing stands between them and complete union, reports Katherine J. Wu for the New York Times.

That's because certain species of anglerfish have adopted what might seem like an extreme approach to the vast, lightless dating pool of the deep. When a male finds a female, which can be up to 60 times his size, he clamps onto her underside with tiny translucent fangs. The comparatively miniscule male's love nip then turns into a permanent attachment: his mouth, and eventually even his blood vessels, fuse to the female to provide her eggs with on demand fertilization. (Talk about clingy.)

In biological terms, the male becomes a sexual parasite incapable of surviving without his beloved—his internal organs, with the exception of his testes, shriveled and useless. In a final twist, there are even a few species known to collect multiple supplicant males, accumulating as many as eight of the glorified sperm sacks.

The rub for immunologists is that this kind of body melding shouldn't be possible for the same reasons humans can't just go swapping organs willy nilly. An ancient part of the vertebrate immune system called adaptive immunity is programmed to seek and destroy any foreign substance that gets into the body, from viruses to bacteria, reports Erin Garcia de Jesus for Science News.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/Anglerfish-Drop-Their-Immune-Defenses-to-Find-Love-180975458/


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