Oh wow guys I need to tell you something amazing! So one of my collegues at my old university just reported that they found 300 frozen roundworms in the permafrost in the Kolima region of Russia, they unfroze them and… 2 of them were alive and started feeding!!! One of them is 41700 years old, the other is 32000 years old.
Eulagisca gigantea, the giant polynoid worm, is a species of marine Polychaete worm belonging to the family Polynoidae, the scale worms. This species is found on the seabed in the Antarctic Ocean. It grows to around eight inches long, and judging by the jaws, it is a predator, but little is known about its diet or behavior.
The area that appears to be the head is actually a retractable pharynx; the last photo shows what it looks like when the pharynx is retracted. (xx)
So yesterday I asked for some OC beat-em-up prompts on twitter, and @flatw00ds offered up their Dr. Doctor vs my Dr. Worms. Dr. Worms isn’t much of a fighter, but there are few things to curb one’s villanous enthusiasm quite like a furious bobbit worm being launched at one’s face.
Anyway this is dumb but I kinda love it regardless, and Dr. Dr was fun to draw
Eunice aphroditois (colloquially known as the Bobbitt worm or sand striker) is an aquatic predatory polychaete worm dwelling at the ocean floor. An ambush predator, the Bobitt worm buries its three-foot-long body into an ocean bed composed of gravel, mud, or corals, where it waits for a stimulus to one of its five antennae, attacking when it senses prey. Armed with sharp teeth, it is known to attack with such speed and ferocity that its prey is sometimes sliced in half.
Saltwater aquariums almost always contain live rock. Live rock is full of helpful bacteria and all sorts of little creatures that help keep things clean and increase biodiversity.
Sometimes it is also full of unhelpful creatures. Mantis shrimp (no, they don’t break glass, but they’ll eat your critters) are the most common baddie. Bobbit worms are rare, but happen- probably the case in the video. They’ll eat all your fish. Some people keep them as weird pets in their own tank when they can get one from another person who’s accidentally gotten one.
Shockingly, they are not the worst-case scenario. What is? Blue-ringed octopus. And that has happened.
Those unhelpful creatures, and the toll the harvesting takes on ecosystems, are the two primary reasons why ‘farmed’ live rock (rock placed in vats full of only the helpful beasties) is becoming more common and much more popular.
annelids like earthworms, bobbit worms and leeches have a simple hole for a mouth like we do, but nematode worms (their own completely different phylum) do tend to have the sci-fi alien sandworm mouth for real
What look like eyes are chemical sensors and sometimes those look like dizzy cartoon spirals:
BettSplendens Tumblr Evac 