Bobbit Worm - Monsters in the Tropical Ocean

t4r1 (45)in #science • 6 years ago (edited)

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If you are not afraid of worms or like to use it for fishing, now think again. The common worms that reside in the bottom of the tropical ocean are really like aliens depicted in Hollywood movies and they are ready to replay your treatment to their brothers on land.

Introduce, this is Eunice aphroditois, also known as the Bobbit worm, a mixture of Mongolian death worms, Graboids from the Tremors movie, insects from the Starship Troopers movie, and the rainbow - but this one is really dangerous. This Bobbit worm hunts its prey in the most appalling way imaginable, hides most of its body (which can reach 3 meters) by digging the seafloor, leaving a few inches of its body on the surface of the seabed, and waiting.

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Using five antennas, the Bobbit worm senses its passing prey, ambushing it with its highly muscled mouthparts, called pharynx. This ambush he did with incredible speed and strength that can split the fish into two pieces. If you can survive in this ambush, you can find out what it feels like to pull quickly into a wormhole and it will be your last and worst experience.

Furthermore, what happens next in the wormhole is somewhat unknown, especially since they have never been observed directly. Scientists think that eunicid injects some toxins that paralyze or kill their prey, in such a way that they can safely swallow - especially if their prey is larger than them -. It is then digested through the gut.

Originally the name of the worm itself, "Bobbit" is not known clearly. In fact, scientists can not agree on how to classify this creature. "We may actually have not only different species, but different genera of the worm," says Schulze, a marine biologist at A & M University in Galveston, Texas. "The patterns of color can vary, and we really do not know how many species there are in this creature." A complicated problem is the preservation process. According to Schulze, the specimens available to scientists have been soaked in formalin or ethanol, which dissolves their gorgeous color.

And marine biologists do not find the Bobbit worms too often in the wild. But once a few times a Bobbit worm appears in an aquarium, like Kraken, ready to create a messy aquarium. Indeed, it is like being the bane of many saltwater aquarists. When they include living rocks - which are actually dead skeletons - into their saltwater aquariums, very small Bobbit worms can also come in with them. But this worm will not always be small for a long time.

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Worm Bobbit worms can tuck themselves deep among corals and destroy all the fish in the aquarium one by one, which will be quite confusing for the owners because their fish just disappear one by one. This event has occurred in a public aquarium in England that lost its fish mysteriously even corals. After dismantling the aquarium, the officers finally found the 'thief' which is 3 meters in length.

And for reproduction, the habit of Bobbit worm remains a mystery. But the researchers hypothesize that their sexual reproduction takes place at an early stage, perhaps when the worm is still about 100 millimeters long, this is very early, given that this worm can grow to a size of nearly 3 meters in some cases.

Eunice aphroditois is found in warm seas around the world, including the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic. So if you are vacationing on the tropical ocean beach and dive, chances are you will encounter this huge, crazy long worm.

Best Regard @t4r1

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