[ghettorigged]

By Daniel Kane
Science
Updated: 3:02 p.m. ET July 30, 2004

WASHINGTON - Worms anchored to the skeleton of a young gray whale in a watery canyon off the coast of California are the first known whalebone-eating marine worms.

At this all-you-can-eat whalebone buffet, female marine worms never leave once they dig in. Males never visit the buffet — they live inside the females. Bacteria within the females’ roots help the worms eat whalebone fats. A study describing the two new species of worms appears in Friday's issue of the journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the nonprofit science society.

The worms are the latest discovery in a branch of biology focused on the life that springs up on sunken whale carcasses. These carcasses — “whale falls,” in science-speak — dot the ocean floor and sustain colorful and mysterious oases of life, according to Science author Robert Vrijenhoek, a researcher from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, Calif.

Bone-eating worms may play important roles in nutrient cycling. A dead whale is roughly equivalent, in food content, to thousands of years of life-sustaining carbon particles that slowly fall to the ocean floor as “marine snow.”

read more about it.... WORMS

 

[Knuckleslammer]

I think I'm gonna phucking puke. Thanks.

Knuckle

 

[biggins]

By Daniel Kane
Science
Updated: 3:02 p.m. ET July 30, 2004

life-sustaining carbon particles that slowly fall to the ocean floor as “marine snow.”

read more about it.... WORMS

kinda like marine dandruff huh?

 

[biggins]

nice new sig mang knuckle

 

[HRDTLBRO]

You guys know what this means now. Bone eating worms have surpassed Ninja's in deadliness. Just think of an organism that lives inside something. You don't even know it's there until it has eaten away at your skull. Ultimate stealth. There isn't enough milk in the world to stop the bad-ass bone eating worm.

 

[golgiaparatus]

By Daniel Kane
Science
Updated: 3:02 p.m. ET July 30, 2004

<snip> the latest discovery in a branch of biology focused on the life that springs up on sunken whale carcasses. These carcasses — “whale falls,” in science-speak — dot the ocean floor and sustain colorful and mysterious oases of life... A dead whale is roughly equivalent, in food content, to thousands of years of life-sustaining carbon particles that slowly fall to the ocean floor as “marine snow.”

That is cool info!

 

[golgiaparatus]

There isn't enough milk in the world to stop the bad-ass bone eating worm.

LOL!

 

[Westy]

I think there are some undiscovered life forms living in my bath tub. They feed off of my shedding hair, skin and dingleberries known as shmeg snow.

 

[Skookum]

dingleberries known as shmeg snow.

sounds as if another bone worm has been busy in your tub. At least you don't have a dead whale rotting in your tub, it's a real pain to clean out the stink, believe me.....

 

[laura]

I think there are some undiscovered life forms living in my bath tub. They feed off of my shedding hair, skin and dingleberries known as shmeg snow.

i really feel ill.

 

[Skookum]

i really feel ill.

Not a food poisining sufferer freindly thread at all.....