Word: lamprey
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...little rivers that feed the Great Lakes, an evil invader was swarming last week by the slithering thousands: the sea lamprey. It looks like a mottled, bluish eel, but instead of a proper mouth it has a round sucker, like the rubber gadget that plumbers use to unplug drains. Inside the rim are rows of small teeth. When a hungry lamprey spies a fish, it darts to the fish's side. The sucker's teeth dig in and get a firm grip. Then the lamprey worries a hole in the fish with a file-like tongue and sucks...
...greatest problem for many animals is to encounter and recognize a possible mate. A male lamprey eel apparently recognizes sex only by attaching himself with his suctorial mouth to another eel that clings to a rock. If the second eel lets go, it is a male and the two separate. If the second eel holds onto the rock, it is a female...
...some lizards and other reptiles and in the larva of the lamprey, the pineal gland is on a stalk (like a crayfish's eyes) and is near the top of the head. Here it has a distinguishable retina and lens. French Philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) believed: "There is a small gland [the pineal] in the brain in which the soul exercises its functions more particularly than in the other parts." Contemporaries agreed...
...thickly greased women, some with sketchy swimming suits, some with none, as they dove into the cool waters of Lake Ontario, swam away around a two-mile rectangular course. Before the first lap was circled. Swimmer Vivian Lee Welsh screamed, thrashed, floundered in the water. A large lamprey eel had fastened its horny teeth into her side. Shuddering with fright, writhing with cramps, she was lifted into a Red Cross rescue boat. At the end of the first lap Martha Norelius of New York, 1928 Olympic champion lately turned professional, led, with Ruth Tower of Toronto, within splashing distance. After...
That lurked where the lamprey...