Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. allowed lampreys to bite on his arms while visiting the Nez Perce salmon hatchery in Idaho on Thursday, the UK Daily Mail reported.
Kennedy allowed the jawless parasitic sea creatures, which hold on with a sucker-like mouth, to give him "hickeys."
Kennedy has a history with parasites, including one that supposedly lodged in his brain more than a decade ago. However, it seems Kennedy was all in favor certain parisites after he let the lampreys latch onto him while showing off for a photo opportunity.
"Lampreys hickeys at the Nez Perce salmon hatchery in NW Idaho," Kennedy captioned the photos he posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Friday. The photos showed him holding the creatures in gloved hands while allowing the mouth part to attach to the underside of the wrist area and arms.
Lampreys hickeys at the Nez Perce salmon hatchery in NW Idaho pic.twitter.com/ma6KvNqd0b
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 25, 2025
According to scientific research, there seems to be no benefit to having the lamprey attach to a person, but Kennedy seemed unbothered and perhaps even welcoming of the bites. This is a change from another time when he purportedly had a parasitic worm grow and die in his brain.
Kennedy said he was experiencing symptoms such as short-term memory loss and brain fog for two years before the cause was finally found. Doctors initially located a mass in his brain in 2012, as Kennedy was in divorce proceedings with his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy.
At first, doctors chalked up his symptoms and the mass to a brain tumor. "I have cognitive problems, clearly. I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me," Kennedy said during a 2012 deposition, according to The New York Times.
However, after seeking a second opinion, another doctor told Kennedy that what they previously thought was a tumor was a cyst "caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died." Kennedy also said he suffered from mercury poisoning at the time, but remains convinced his problems were due to the parasitic infection.
"They said that this is almost certainly a parasite that got into your brain. It's a parasite that's very common in India, where I had done a lot of environmental work," Kennedy said, according to the UK Daily Mail.
Parasites aren't the only wildlife Kennedy has had a run-in with. Near the end of the 2024 presidential campaign, Kennedy admitted to leaving a bear cub carcass in Central Park in New York City in October 2014, where a dog walker discovered the bear's body.
Authorities had no idea how it got there at the time until Kennedy spilled the beans a decade later. He explained in a video posted to X on August 4, 2024, that he found the cub dead in a forest after it was hit by a car. He took it with him, planning to eat the meat and skin the bear, but his travel plans did not allow for this.
Instead, Kennedy claims his drunk friends urged him to bring the bear to Central Park and leave it as a prank. He made it look like a bicycle accident in the city caused the bear cub's death, and without any other explanation available, Kennedy got away with it for a decade as authorities were left scratching their heads.
Despite his admission, Kennedy didn't face any penalties as the statute of limitations ran out. Some have suggested that this story and other bizarre conduct should disqualify Kennedy from President Donald Trump's administration, but it doesn't seem to distract him from his important work.
Kennedy is definitely a person who marches to the beat of his own drummer, even if it means leaving a bear carcass in Central Park or letting parasites give him hickeys. His innovative thinking is a valuable asset for breaking the stagnant status quo in Washington, D.C., especially when it comes to issues of health and well-being.
