About

Penis Fish is a colloquial name for the Fat Innkeeper Worm, a ten-ich phallic aquatic worm. Images of the fish in a person's hands went viral in December 2019, after thousands of these creatures washed ashore in California.

Origin

On June 15th, 2019, iNaturalist^[1] user kmontana published the photograph of the fish in a person's hand (shown below). Roughly six months later, on December 10th, the photograph was used in an article for Bay Nature^[2] about thousands of Fat Innkeeper Worms were found on Drakes Beach, California.

Spread

On December 12th, 2019, the New York Post^[3] tweeted ^[4] about the story. The tweet received more than 5,400 likes and 2,300 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, left).

Following the post, people began joking about the story, sharing the New York Post tweet and other posts by publications, such as The Guardian (example below, center).^[5]

On December 13th, Twitter^[6] user @TheTweetOfGod shared an article and tweeted, "Now I’m just messing with you." The post received more than 6,200 likes and 1,000 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, right).

Various Examples

External References