If you have heard of a large worm hiding in the ground until it is time to pick up and capture its prey while it is still alive, you would think it would be from awesome movie. However, this type of worm does, of course, exist, and has been around for a long time, according to a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
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“Nutrition behavior of the aristocratic predator” worm Bobbit “(Eunice aphroditois) remarkable. They hide in their holes until they explode high grabbing an unsuspecting prey with a lump of powerful jaws. The surviving prey will then be dragged into the sediment for consumption, “the study’s authors wrote politely.
Why is this coming up now? Because the researchers found an ancient and possibly extinct ancestor in the worm that may be even more shrill than the current one.
This is an achievement because the bodies of predatory polychaetes are usually made of soft material, making it difficult for them to be fossilized. The team said they used “morphological, sedimentary, and geochemical data from the Miocene strata in northeastern Taiwan” to identify this. 20 million year old worm.
In particular, the researchers found the species’ L-shaped holes, about 6.5 ft (2 mt) long and about one inch (two to three centimeters) in diameter. The length of modern specimens usually ranges from 2 to 4 ft (60-120 cm), with some samples growing up to 10 ft (3 mt).
They would say the worm they had found anew Pennichnus and explained how they examined 319 trace samples preserved in sandstone sediments across Yehliu Geopark and the Badouzi peninsula in Taiwan to understand it. What they found was that the worm had some unusual hunting and feeding habits.
“These data are comparable to today’s marine environments in the North West Sea and to biological analogs, and an argument has been presented that suggests that the L-shaped holes record hunting behavior of Miocene Bobbit worms, “the researchers wrote.
“After each feeding, the ambush-predatory polychaete resets digging openings,” the researchers further explained. While this discovery is interesting to explore, we are pleased that these large predatory worms do not appear to exist today.