How Fishy is Your Relationship?

A documentary about fish and other sea creatures that live in the deepest parts of the ocean, where no rays from the sun penetrate and the temperature is -40 degrees Fahrenheit, was on The Discovery Channel today. I eagerly watched the part about some sort of angler fish, so called because the female has a little lure of sorts that flashes on its head to attract prey in the darkness, while I ran for 14 minutes this afternoon. The male version of this fish is utterly useless except as a sex machine.

Seriously. It has no little light to attract prey and is ten times smaller than the female. The only way it survives is to detect the chemical scent a female emits (it has a little organ in front of its eyes that can pick up the smell) and then use its tiny teeth to attach itself to her belly. Once attached, it survives by sucking out the blood of the female for nourishment. In return, it provides a constant source of semen so that the female can reproduce.

You can look at this semi-parasitic situation in two ways: the male is either a lazy, worthless sack of shit that lives off its hard working female partner; or the male is basically a boy toy whose mere purpose in life is to pleasure his woman. Do you think how you interpret the fish situation may say a lot about how you view the relationship between human males and females, or am I on a fishing expedition here? (Ba-dum-dum, cymbal clash.)