Outrageously Funny Word Dictionary :: Long barbel

👉 Okay, let’s tackle that wonderfully weird-sounding mouthful, the

"long barbel."

Frankly, just saying it out loud already feels a little… unsettling, doesn’t it? Let me unpack this for you.

Basically, a long barbel in the admittedly rather specific context of a goldfish is a ridiculously oversized, frankly somewhat phallic appendage—we're talking a fleshy, bony antenna that sticks right out from its maw! They don’t just dangle politely either – these guys are aggressively, almost theatrically, pointy and frankly, quite dramatic. Now, here's what makes them long . You might reasonably think, "Okay, goldfish have barbells—it's pretty standard stuff—they use it for tickling their neighbour when they want some of their food." And you wouldn’t exactly be entirely wrong! However, certain goldfish species – particularly the Moulton Rowallocki (yes, I just threw a mouthful of fancy-sounding nonsense at you) and some closely related blowfly breeders - develop these barbells into frankly enormous affairs. They can measure anywhere from 6 to 18 inches—seriously. You could probably knit a small, aggressively pointy, frankly insulting, little waistcoat with that kind of length! They don't need them. There isn’t a clear evolutionary advantage for such an outlandish protrusion. It is, quite frankly, the result of some sort of bizarre and probably embarrassing genetic quirk