Scientists Uncovered Zombie Snot Worm

You’ll often find this marine worm in the deep waters of the Pacific. But now they’ve been spotted in the North Sea. It has been suggested that the worms are using whale-oils inside the bone as a fuel source, with specialised bacteria inside their roots breaking down the oils to release energy. The marine worm, which lives off whale bones on the sea floor, was found on a minke whale carcass in relatively shallow water close to Tjarno Marine Laboratory on the Swedish coast. A UK-Swedish team reports the new species has been named Osedax mucofloris, which literally means ”Bone-Eating Snot-Flower”. Dr Adrian Glover, a researcher at London’s Natural History Museum, and Thomas Dahlgren ,who is affiliated to Gothenburg University, says they look like ”flowers poking out of the whale bone..... the part of the animal that is exposed to the seawater is covered in a ball of mucus, so they are quite snotty”, probably as a defence mechanism. Osedax worms are about 1-2cm in length. Certainly in the case of the Pacific Osedax - their reproductive system is extraordinary. Dr Glover explains that ”the female Pacific worms keep males inside their tube as a sort of little harem that fertilises eggs ”. But he’s not sure what’s happening with the reproductive biology of the Swedish worms yet, as oddly only females and no males have been found yet. Glover and Dahlgren, are planning further lab studies of these North Sea worms.