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Can you identify this animal? 🔍️👀

Did you get a kick out of shouting “acorn worm” at your phone? If so, you might enjoy playing #FathomVerse, a game where you can identify ocean animals and help improve the AI models that researchers use to study marine life. This month, you can find acorn worms by playing FathomVerse and earn a special badge!

Acorn worms are known to biologists as “enteropneusts” (pronounced ‘entero-noosts’—the ‘p’ is silent). Named for their acorn-shaped front end, enteropneusts are actually more closely related to humans than to worms. They have a rudimentary nerve cord similar to ours and breathe oxygen using structures similar to a fish's gills.

Marine biologists know very little about deep-sea acorn worms, partly because their bodies are so soft and gelatinous that they are usually destroyed by the dredges and other collection tools used to study deep-seafloor animals. Researchers at MBARI and our collaborators have been using advanced robots and time-lapse cameras to learn more about these wonderful worms.

Download and play the game.