This disgusting truth about Finding Nemo fish will ruin your childhood forever

Remember Finding Nemo? That cute little clownfish adventure full of family feels, underwater laughs, and heartwarming daddy-son moments? Yeah… forget all that. Because science just came along and flushed it all down the loo. Turns out, real-life clownfish don’t quite live the wholesome Disney dream. Nope, their sex lives are straight-up weird. And if Finding Nemo had followed the facts, well… let’s just say the plot would’ve made you spit out your popcorn.

So, what happens in Finding Nemo?

via Disney/Pixar

Finding Nemo starts with heartbreak. Marlin the clownfish loses his wife, Coral, and all their baby eggs in a terrifying fish attack, all except one little egg. That egg hatches into Nemo, the son he’ll do absolutely anything to protect. Naturally, being a Disney film, Marlin becomes a helicopter parent, Nemo gets rebellious, and a diver snatches him up, kicking off a massive ocean-wide rescue mission filled with laughs, jellyfish, surfer turtles and sharks in therapy.

It’s a sweet and emotional father-son story. Or… so we thought.

So, what’s the disgusting truth?

via Disney/Pixar

Umm… Clownfish, the species Nemo and Marlin belong to, have a bizarre little quirk in nature. Every clownfish is born male. All of them. But within each group, there’s a strict social hierarchy, and the biggest, baddest clownfish becomes the only female. She runs the show, and only she and her chosen male mate get to make babies. The rest of the males are just waiting in line, hoping someone dies so they can move up the pecking order.

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Now, when the female dies, like Coral does at the beginning of the film, the dominant male (Marlin, in this case) doesn’t stay single and sad. He transforms into a female. Full biological sex change. Science calls it sequential hermaphroditism.

So, what would actually happen?

via Disney/Pixar

If Pixar had kept things biologically accurate, Finding Nemo would’ve been a very different movie. Marlin wouldn’t have gone on a heroic quest. He would’ve just chilled in the anemone, slowly turning into a mum. Meanwhile, little Nemo, being the next biggest male, would grow up to take dad-now-mum’s place as her breeding partner. Nemo would become the new dominant male and, well… end up mating with what used to be his dad. The two would start popping out new little clownfish babies together, and no one in the reef would even bat a fin. Because for clownfish, that’s just how life works.

Unsurprisingly, the internet has lost it. Reddit threads have blown up with people sharing their horror and confusion. One user wrote, “Now you won’t see Finding Nemo in the same light again,” and honestly? They’re not wrong. Others are taking it a step further, joking that “This is the real reason Nemo ran away” or “That’s why he was so desperate to find Nemo, it was time to breed.”

Even scientists have weighed in. Stephen R. Palumbi and Anthony R. Palumbi wrote in their book The Extreme Life of the Sea that, scientifically speaking, Marlin would’ve become Nemo’s mum, and the two would go on to raise a whole load of slightly incestuous Nemos. That’s not just traumatising, it’s evolutionary strategy.

Nature is wild.

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