Remember This Old Nursery Rhyme?

There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile,

He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;

He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

I was reminded of that piece of memorabilia from my childhood when I saw the accompanying photo of a largemouth bass with scoliosis, a spinal condition often found in adolescent humans, as well as different species of fish.

According to one online site, roughly three million new cases of scoliosis are diagnosed among humans in the United States each year. A majority of them are identified as idiopathic scoliosis, a type that presents itself in children between 10 and 12 years of age.

Unfortunately, studies have yet to reveal much about scoliosis in fish species. Many have shown that causes of the vertebral abnormalities may include genetics, parasites, pollutants, and other environmental factors. Meanwhile, the scientists continue trying to determine whether there are consistencies in some parameters of scoliosis in fish species: the position of the kinks, the magnitude of the curvature, the pathology of the vertebrae, and other skeletal elements involved, etc.

One thing certain is that, despite some forum comments I found online to the contrary, this condition in a fish isn't caused by poor handling.