A semi-cooked squid inseminated a 63-year-old Korean woman's mouth while she was eating it, causing her to feel a "pricking and foreign-body sensation"
The woman, from Seoul, immediately spat out the partially boiled squid along with its internal organs after experiencing severe pain in her mouth.
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Despite that, she could feel many “small squirming’’ organisms in her mouth.
According to researchers, a trip to the hospital revealed she had twelve “small, white, spindle-shaped, bug-like organisms stuck in the mucous membrane of the tongue, cheek and gingival,” a news website reported.
Doctors initially thought they were squid parasites because they were still moving during the examination.
However, researchers later noticed the presence of a sperm bag and identified the creatures as the dead squid’s spermatophores.
Researchers believe the sperm bags were discharged while chewing. They warned squid-lovers to remove internal organs if consuming it raw, or to boil them long enough to kill the sperm bags.
The incident wasn’t the first to be reported - several cases of oral stings by squid have taken place in Japan.
Squids contain an ejaculatory apparatus for releasing sperm mass when it comes into contact with a female. The bags become attached to the female’s body before the sperm slowly emerge from it.
The finding was published in a scientific paper published by American Society of Parasitologists in the Journal of Parasitology.