![]() "The reason for the expelling of the proboscis is that the worm thinks that it is attacked," said Kvist. ![]() The fleshy tube is an infolding of the body wall that can evert like the finger of a rubber glove – and i f you watch the footage closely, you'll notice that the worm actually discards it. Out of the 1,000 or more known species of ribbon worms, only a handful possess a branching proboscis like this one. There isn't much information about where the sighting was filmed, but we suspect that the worm belongs to the genus Gorgonorhynchus. We checked in with Kvist about this more recent encounter, and he confirmed that the ribbon worm in the video wa s in very bad shape. "My best guess is that the worm is dying and that's why it's breaking apart ," he explained. When this happens, the severed pieces can continue wriggling around like animated copies of a parent worm. When a similar clip went viral back in 2015, nemertean specialist Dr Sebastian Kvist, who is also an associate curator of invertebrates at Royal Ontario Museum, noted that the animals sometimes fall apart if handled. In fact, they typically survive for only about ten minutes in the open air. However, what you're looking at is actually just a single individual – and this worm is under an immense amount of stress.īecause their delicate bodies rely on water pressure to hold everything in place, ribbon worms do not fare well away from the ocean environment.
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