Wild Facts

Photo by Nick Hobgood (Wikimedia)

Did you know there are only 234 days left until Christmas? I thought we could start our preparations early this year by learning how to decorate a Christmas tree. And what better way to teach this lesson than to learn about an animal commonly known as the Christmas Tree Worm. Sure their real name is Spirobranchus giantess but that is just too difficult to say so we will stick with their common name. These little worms can be found in tropical oceans throughout the world, which seems funny to me since I think of  a cold, snowy day when you say Christmas.

Time to Decorate

Looking at these colourful worms, it is fairly easy to tell how they received their common name. Each worm has two “crowns”, which look an awful lot like a brightly coloured Christmas tree. Believe it or not, these “trees” are actually highly specialized mouth and respiratory appendages (yes, they do both). So if you are a micro-organism, you have to be careful when you go to put the presents under the tree. Each spiral of the Christmas Tree is composed of feather-like tentacles, which not only capture their micro-organism prey but it also moves it to their mouth.

Photo by Nick Hobgood (Wikimedia)

Lazy or Smart?

You never have to worry about being chased down by a Christmas Tree Worm. These animals are considered to be sedentary (they don’t really move). They will usually bore a hole into a nice piece of coral before excreting a calcareous tube. This hard tube offers shelter and protection to our little holiday loving worm. Now their only purpose in life is to sit and wait for micro-organisms to swim into their feathery Christmas tree rings. And here I thought the Sloth was lazy, but they have nothing on these colourful worms.

Taking Down the Christmas Tree

Remember when I said that the Christmas Tree Worm doesn’t really move? Well, that isn’t exactly true. Sure they don’t pack their moving van and head out to another piece of coral but they will retract their feather-like appendages if they are startled. They have no problems taking down their Christmas tree and putting it into their home deep inside the living coral. If you would like to see this first hand, then I suggest watching the very well done video below:

Pretty cool animals, right? Luckily, their population is healthy, so as long as we keep the coral living, we will always have the pleasure of seeing this beautiful sea creatures.

Pigbutt Worm - Click for original photo source.

I hope you are prepared to venture into the world of the weird and unusual today. I don’t think we can get much more bizarre than learning about the newly discovered Pigbutt Worm. Come on, just the name of this animal is intriguing….and funny. I am not messing with you either, this is a real animal, which is also known as “Flying Buttocks”. I can just imagine how much this poor worm gets made fun of at school for its name(s). In order to study this unusual worm we will need to grab our scuba gear and head to the ocean, so let’s get going.

I hope you are not afraid of deep dives since this particular odd-named creature is found below the Oxygen Minimum Zone (OMZ), which is the location where oxygen saturation in the water is at its lowest. This is about 900 to 1200 m (3000 to 4000 feet) below the surface. I told you it was going to be a deep dive. So why in the world would the Pigbutt Worm (I seriously giggle every time I write this) want to live in such an environment? Well, scientists believe they prefer this zone since there is an abundance of detritus that continuously falls from the upper layers of the water column. The Pigbutt Worm is able to form a nice little “cloud” of mucus around their mouth which in turn catches all of this scrumptious food. Personally, I would just alter my eating habits and live in a more hospitable place but then again, I don’t have a Pigbutt!

Pigbutt Worm Mouth

Okay, so how did this worm end up with such an odd name. Seriously? You just need to look at their back end to figure this one out. That’s right, they basically look like a floating….umm….butt. This particular worm, which is a member of the Chaetoperidae family, is segmented but like it’s family members has an inflated mid-section, which gives it this unusual appearance. Unlike the rest of their family, they don’t live in tubes on the ocean floor. As mentioned, they prefer to just float around in this oxygen deprived zone. Perhaps, they don’t have a choice given the fact that they have a huge bubble in the middle of their body.

Pigbutt Worm Fast Fact - This worm is also larger than most members of its family as they are about the size of a chestnut. Scientists haven’t been able to determine if they are adults or larvae. Considering the size, you would think they were adults but all the specimens to date have been missing sexual organs, so the mystery has yet to be solved. Are you up for solving this mystery?

Thanks for reading about the bizarre Pigbutt Worm. I hope you enjoyed our weird and mysterious Wild Fact. Have a great day and I will see you tomorrow.

Photo by Michael Linnenbach (Wikimedia)

The nice thing about Wild Facts is you don’t have to wait for the conditions to be perfect to learn about certain animals.  Take the Earthworm, more commonly known as the Dew-Worm, for example.  To catch them you have to wait for optimal conditions such as a nice night after a rain shower.  Then you grab your dad, your brother and a couple trusty flashlights and head out to the lawn to get tommorrows fishing bait.  At least this is what I did while growing up.   I am happy to say that you don’t need a flashlight, rain, darkness or even family to read about Earthworms on Wild Facts.  Before we learn a little more about these little guys and I want to thank my dad not only for suggesting today’s Fact but also for the great memories catching worms beside our house.

The Earthworm is basically a tube and contains a digestive system within this tube.  You may not think of this too much but an Earthworm does actually have a simple, closed circulatory system.  Basically they have two main blood vessels, the ventral (underside) which feeds blood to the back-end of the worm and the dorsal (upperside) which brings blood to the front end of the worm.  Even if it is a fairly simple system it is something we rarely think about with Dew-Worms.

Closeup of an Earthworm (Wikimedia)

It has always amazed me that the Earthworm is able to regenerate segments of their bodies.  That’s right, if you cut off a segment the Earthworm will grow it back.  Now I am not saying to go out of your way and start cutting up Dew-Worms.   Usually this ability varies between species and obviously depends upon the extent of the damage.  Believe it or not, a study in the 1970′s showed that in certain species it is actually possible to grow two whole worms from one bisected specimen.   If you ask me , that is pretty cool!

After reading the first paragraph of today’s Fact you may have been questioning why Earthworms come out at night and after a rainstorm.  I will answer the night part first since it is easier.  Simply put, the Earthworms will die very quickly during the day as the hot sun and UV rays dry them out or dessicate them.  I guess they are like vampires in that sense.  Moving onto the rain factor.  Well this isn’t as easy to answer but their are a few educated guesses.  The first and in my opinion the most likely has to do with the ground getting saturated with rain water.  Earthworms can only take so much water so as the ground fills up they head to the surface for some relief.  Another possible scenario is the ease of movement when the upper surface is wet.  In this case when the surface is wet the Earthworms find it an ideal time to come up and slither through the grass to a new area.  There are a couple of other ideas but I think these two are the most probable.  What do you think?

That does it for the Earthworm but make sure you tune in tomorrow for the last Fact of the week.