Remoras are brown, belong to the family Echineidae and can grow to three feet long.
It’s famous dorsal fin is an oval sucker organ with which it can hitch rides on larger fish, and sometimes boats. It increases the suction by sliding backwards.
Depending on their favored hosts, remoras are also sometimes known as sharksuckers or whalesuckers, although not to their face, as this is a good way to piss them off.
Parasite is also a good expression to avoid around remoras. It’s not parasitism, it’s a niche. And it’s not commensalism or phoresy it’s mutualism, or, if the remora is not prone to cleaning bacteria from the host, it’s who cares about a stupid shark anyway
Remoras sometimes have bad, bad weeks where they totally can’t focus and are totally miserable; but they don’t despair, because they know from experience that eventually something will click, they will write something, for example, or it will write itself, and the clouds will clear and, man, what a nice fall morning!
Remoras have a great capacity for more or less stoic suffering, but they can also be so full of love they could burst.
If you’re ever at a cocktail party with a remora and are at a loss for something to talk about, ask it what it does for a living (if it is a nuclear scientist or something along those lines) or about its kids, and all you’ll have to say for the next couple of hours is, “is that so?” and “uh-huh, gee.”
Marine biologists argue over whether a remora’s primary diet is fragments dropped by the host, or the host’s feces, which is why marine biologists are rarely invited back to dinner parties.
Remoras lack a swim bladder.
A remora’s favorite season is autumn, at least if you ask it in autumn.
The remora cannot help it if you cannot come up with more silence-inducing questions. If you ask the remora to be interesting, it is your own fault if the remora then proceeds to be more interesting than you are.
You nailed it to a T. Can’t tell you how many cocktail parties I’ve been at where the remora was the one doing all the talking.
The remora cannot help it if you cannot come up with more silence-inducing questions. If you ask the remora to be interesting, it is your own fault if the remora then proceeds to be more interesting than you are.