Alert reader Hempstein found this scary creature on Wired Science. It’s a bobbit worm, a predatory polychaete with the scientific name Eunice aphroditois. It’s actually quite pretty in a ghastly kind of way, and can grow up to 3 meters long:
Wired gives more information:
Using five antennae, the bobbit worm senses passing prey, snapping down on them with supremely muscled mouth parts, called a pharynx. It does this with such speed and strength that it can split a fish in two. And that, quite frankly, would be a merciful exit. If you survive initially, you get to find out what it’s like to be yanked into the worm’s burrow and into untold nightmares.
“What happens next is rather unknown, especially because they have not been observed directly,” Luis F. Carrera-Parra and Sergio I. Salazar-Vallejo, ecologists specializing in annelid polychaetes at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) in Campeche, Mexico, wrote in a joint email to WIRED. “We think that the eunicid injects some narcotizing or killing toxin in their prey animal, such that it can be safely ingested — especially if they are larger than the worm — and then digested through the gut.”
Wikipeda adds this:
In March 2009, the Blue Reef Aquarium in Newquay, Cornwall, discovered a bobbit worm in one of their tanks. The workers had seen the devastation caused by the worm, such as fish being injured or disappearing and coral being sliced in half, but didn’t find it until they started taking the display apart in the tank. This may not be an isolated incident; Bobbit worms can be introduced to tank environments while hidden in “live rock.”
The worm’s ability to slice prey in half has led to suggestions that its name comes from the unfortunate John Bobbitt, whose paternal apparatus was severed from his body by his wife Lorena in 1993 after an altercation whose nature was never resolved.
At any rate, here’s the highlight: watch this worm catch a fish (be sure to watch all the way through):
With regard to the Bobbitt incident: after reading the worm’s name, I expected it to have the ability to cut fish in half. I was not disappointed.
That thing is awesome ! That was hypnotic viewing in a grim sort of way!
3 meter nightmare worms with rapier jaws – thx for this. I needed another thing to think about when diving…
PZ would be delighted.
I wonder what happened to the worm after it dragged the octo down under.
Maybe it got inked and didn’t feel like eating octopus that particular day.
Maybe it ate the octopus and went back for the other four legs. Half. Whatever.
Wonderful design!
Here’s another species in the same genus:
File:Machine-screw-tap-2.jpg
That octopus was not having it.
I wonder what the octopus did to the worm. Perhaps the worm realized it could never eat all that octopus.
Diana, there is always the supernatural explanation…which makes sense, if you don’t think about it.
And I, in turn, have to h/t Henry for prior alert on this one.
Also, Eunice aphroditois indeed. Eunice, not Lorena?
Well I will never look at a girl called Eunice again without remembering this! Looks like it escaped from the Cambrian…
I found what looks like a misplaced Eunicid:
“Giant reef worm Eunice aphroditois* …
What does it eat? It appears to eat seaweed. It creeps cautiously out of its hiding place then quickly snatches a mouthful before retracting back instantly. Among the seaweeds we have observed being gathered by the worm include: Hairy green seaweed (Bryopsis sp.) and Sargassum seaweed (Sargassum sp.). Although it seems to have ferocious jaws, these are probably used more to ensure a good grip on the food item. They have not been observed eating animals. …
*Tentative identification. Species are difficult to positively identify without close examination. On this website, they are grouped by external features for convenience of display.
Acknowledgement
With grateful thanks to Leslie H. Harris of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County for comments about these worms.”
Seems to be a wide variety of Eunicid food. I also found articles about species feeding on corals.
“But it is listed among the dangerous animals on our shores as it can give a nasty bite. So do leave the worm alone.”
Not a problem. If I saw one of those things I would be leaving it alone at a hundred miles an hour. (shudder)
I’d poke it with a stick.
I tried to grab one behind the head. Had no idea about the jaws on the thing, and thought I’d somehow punched a rock oyster when I saw all the blood.
This is why you should always use a stick before you use your hands. 🙂
WTF, Evolution?
Someone needs to make a sci fi movie about this stat!
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087182/"I thought they did already.
Damn, stuffed that linky.
I thought about Dune too but the sand worms didn’t seem as bitey as this fella. Maybe sand worm meets alien!
Wired describes the worm as
Have we really seen this whole 10 foot worm? What if it’s just an appendage of a huge underground beast? 😉
Reblogged this on Mark Solock Blog.
Oh it is actually very long. There are other videos on youtube that show that.
I am just about to go to bed. I am SO not going to watch that video. 3 metres long? I do not wish to wake screaming in the middle of the night… 🙁
P.S. Yet another argument for the view that if God made everything, He obviously enjoyed watching horror movies way too much…
Go on, watch it, I dare you….you know you want to. 🙂
I managed to not watch it. Woke up screaming anyway…
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
*whew*
In response to the queries above about how the mollusk managed to escape: my guess would be that it detached one of its arms for the worm to munch on. Or perhaps the beasties realized they are both unholy star-spawn of the same great Cthulhu, and should spend their energies hunting down tasty vertebrates like us rather than fighting each other.
I saw video of this a couple of years ago from an in-final-production wildlife film at a diving conference. It truly is a fear-inspiring death machine. But to add to the entertainment, most of the filming had to be nocturnal ; the currents are strong (look at the grain size of the sediments) ; and it’s in some fairly remote Indonesian inter-island channels with some pretty filthy looking water. Quite a lot of diving skill went into getting those films for your delectation.
I think the naming attribution to the John Bobbit incident sounds unlikely. There are plenty of other big-nasty predators in the sea. I note the the initial species description is attributed “Eunice aphroditois (Pallas, 1788)”, somewhat predating Mrs Bobbit’s sausage-preparation efforts and Mr Bobbit’s (short) career in pornography.
There’s an interesting coincidence between Pallas (the person), Pallasite (a meteorite type described by Pallas the person, a specimen of which rusts genteely in my rock-pile), Pallasovska (a town named for Pallas the person), and the Pallasovska meteorite found near that town in 1990.
I wonder, if there is a ProfCeilingCat-burg, or a Coyne-Oya, anywhere on the planet. Yet.
But the provenance of the scientific name has no relation to the common name…
..which, FWIW, is commonly spelled “Bobbit” in the SW aquarium community.