From Shark Bay Films on vimeo, via PZ, comes this awesome video – life and death on the sea bed. It opens with a species of polychaete worm (aka bobbit worms**) – what an amazing stealth predator! And surely one to give small children – and first-year biology students! – nightmares.
And there are ribbon eels, and cuttlefish, and crabs, a real glutton of the seas and, for sheer ‘squee!’ value, the orange frogfish: the larger female tootling along the sea bed on her modified pelvic & pectoral fins, with a couple of smaller males tagging along behind. (But I have to say that their eating habits are not squee-worthy at all.)
Another reminder of the diversity and, yes, flamboyance generated by evolutionary processes 🙂
** I was enchanted to find the bobbit worm featuring at #1 on "The 5 Most Nightmarish Worms on the Planet" – the post is well worth a read to find out who comes in at 2, 3, 4 & 5.
Marcus Wilson says:
That Bobbit worm is real horror movie stuff.
Alison Campbell says:
Even more so when you realise that they can grow to 3 metres or so in length!