Beware!! Squid Sperm That Can Inseminate Your Mouth

squid insemination Beware!! Squid Sperm That Can Inseminate Your Mouth

Today’s gross-out story comes to us via Science20.com and is about the unfortunate case of squid sperm getting stuck inside the mouth of a Korean lady.

Apparently the case was reported in the February edition of the Journal of Parasitology (dang I must have missed that month’s edition) and explained that after eating parboiled squid, the woman experienced some serious pain and felt as though a ‘foreign-body’ was ‘pricking’ the inside of her mouth (absolutely no pun intended). She went to the doctor and he discovered that her pain was being caused by 12 “small, white spindle-shaped, bug-like organisms”. How positively delightful!

The doctor removed them and they were later found to be squid spermatophores -which as the writer of the Sceince20 article Danna Staaf pointed out, are not really ‘organisms’, nor are they especially bug-like! They are however a complex structure that includes “ejaculatory apparatus” which apparently can expel the sperm quite forcefully! Now isn’t that something that you have always wanted to know?!

These spermatophores also contain a “cement body” for attachment – which is how, I imagine they ended up stuck inside their poor woman’s mouth! I bet she was counting her blessings that the spermatophores weren’t from the 13ft badboy that fishing columnist Al McGlashan found off the coast of Tasmania last week – now that would have been pretty uncomfortable!
See, this is why I don’t eat squid – you can keep it and all its slimy, clingy spermatophores!!

Apparently, there have been several instances of squid sperm attaching themselves to the human mouth after the consumption of raw squid! Raw squid?!? WTF why would you???

However this is believed to be the first reported instance of it happening after the person has consumed a cooked squid! According to Staaf though, the Western world’s serial squid-eaters need not be overly concerned – as squid preparation in this part of the world usually sees all internal organs removed and only the muscle served. Staaf also says that spermatophores are perfectly safe to handle as the skin on our hands and everywhere else on our bodies is too tough for it to attach itself to. Thanks for that info, but I still won’t be fiddling with any squidy bits anytime soon!