#echiura

[animalids]

Green spoon worm (Bonellia viridis)

Photo by Ron Greer

[typhlonectes]

Green Spoon Worm

Check out this freaky Green Spoon Worm (Metabonellia haswelli, phylum Echiura), filmed in Port Phillip Bay, Australia, on 8 Feb 2018.

It may look harmless, but this marine  worm can paralyze small animals using the neural poison in its skin.

via: Youtube.com

[montereybayaquarium]

Fat innkeeper worms were in the news recently as a mass stranding of "penis fish"! In fact, they're neither, and as proud spoon worms, fat innkeeper worms are an integral part of the seafloor community of the West Coast, so we did a livestream yesterday to highlight this amazing animal!

Fat innkeeper worms filter seawater for food and provide shelter for many species in their burrows, while being a source of food for many animals, including sea otters! They're thriving and deserve praise. Live your truth Urechis caupo!

[witchyplasma]

taxonomy is weird not just when you’re trying to distinguish species but also when you’re looking at the big categories because

same phylum

same phylum

same phylum

Every single one of these worms is in a different phylum.

[animalids]

Green spoon worm (Metabonellia haswelli)

Photo by John Eichler

[macronectes]

:(

[drhoz]

A Most Illustrious Worm: Ikeda taenioides - I'd like to draw your attention today to a remarkable worm, Ikeda taenioides, whose immense size and bizarre morphology make it unlike anything you are likely to have seen before—a veritable living tape measure of a creature, stuck on its own lonely, idiosyncratic branch of the tree of life. Despite having been

[drhoz]

Although they do get one thing backwards - the pigment is named after the worm, not the other way around