Those giddy days of Halloween television,  Ma insisted you were too young to watch a pissed humanoid water breather slime its way through the streets preying on the unwary, dragging screaming female teens into the cold bosom of a nearby bay …

… there to perform unimaginable and completely horrific unknown rituals on their taut … flesh …

Pop wasn’t allowed to watch either – and if the pair of you were caught he’d point finger and rat you out.

50 years of perfectly good science fiction ruined because some biologist discovered different …

Apparently fish gills aren’t just for breathing. A dual purpose organ which assists in ion exchange with the surrounding water, allowing fish to regulate their internal chemistry.

“In freshwater fish, like rainbow trout, they tend to lose ions from their blood to the water, because the ion concentration in blood is greater than that of freshwater,” she said.

The team took measurements from the gills of young, developing rainbow trout to find out what functions they were performing.

“When the gills are still immature, a significant portion of ion uptake occurs at the skin. As the fish get older and the gills mature, [this] can gradually shift to… the gills,” said Ms Fu.

“We found that ion uptake shifted from the skin to the gills earlier than oxygen uptake. This led us to propose that the gills are needed for ion regulation earlier than they are needed for oxygen uptake.”

This recent study suggests you may be twice the oaf for jamming them hammy hands into the gill area, as you may be injuring a delicate mechanism designed to suck up sewage, DDT, and twice distilled female hormones.

The good news is that Hollywood can reshoot all them old movies, and feature a really pissed man-eating-mostly-head Rainbow trout with a preference for nubile teen fems …

… and you get to claim innocence (while pointing the finger at Junior) – as you thought it was a Rivers that Cost Most remake …

I say, do the math. A steady influx of chemicals into the watershed and gills as chemical exchange – begats really muscular gills as the toxic burden increases, requiring evolution and expansion of the skull area – resulting in (possibly) larger brains and huge gill assemblies.

That larger head should make big teeth an evolutionary no-brainer, and the result will be a sentient, really pissed, mostly head, rainbow trout – with the ability to harsh your mellow, babe.

… better learn how to cast from a shark cage.

Tags: fish gills, gill evolution, University of British Columbia, Clarice Fu, DDT, rainbow trout, ion exchange, sewage, DDT, science fiction, nubile teens, pissed water breather