I'm so sad I don't know the first thing about reading scientific papers. Would love to see if those Spanish-speaking scientists learnt anything new about the bobbit worm 🎉
something else you might like (albeit not zoological related); in hexadecimal IP addresses (the ones with letters mixed with numbers and colons every 4 digits), the groupings of four digits are called nybble because a group of 8 digits is a byte. :D (And one digit is a bit. So pay attention to the "we give you super speed internet!" ads. The difference between 1 gigaBYTE per second and one gigaBIT per second is very, very big.)
You should DEFINITELY do a separate video specifically about the bobbit Worm Chronicle. It is SO FUNNY. The level of wacky, looney tunes hijinks he performs JUST to try to get the bobbit worm out to capture is is funny in and of itself. My favorite part is that at one point he thinks he got it, and then you look at the thread's page count and it's like page 5 of 14. Truly a masterclass in story telling.
Hearing about Bobbit worms hitchhiking into salt water tanks makes me grateful I stuck to freshwater/brackish. Tearing everything apart to look for a murder worm really does sound like an absolute nightmare.
@@SageAsuka I like my bladder snails. There's only a couple bigger ones around normally, but if I see an explosion of babies, something really went wrong and my tank needs urgent attention.
I totally expected the Sarlac or whatever the desert sand pit thing was in Star Wars to be inspired at least partially by bobbit worms (though antlions could've been enough), but Dune's sandworms? Why? They're basically big hungry earthworms, they have pretty much nothing in common with sandworms except for being worms and burrowing.
Yeah! Bobbit worms are fast ambush predators that can eat as much as they can. Dune sandworms are slow, relatively docile creatures that are basically the worm version of a whale. They literally eat blatantly named sand plankton in the ground!
I have another theory about why the worm got named 'aphroditois'. Hesiod's poem says that Aphrodite was born from sea foam produced by the severed.... erm.... eggplant of Uranus that got thrown into the ocean. May have been a scientist leaning in to the bobbit reference.
Ooh, that's an interesting idea, but I don't think that's the case. The scientist who gave this worm the name 'Eunice aphroditois' did so aaaalll the way back in 1788. And as near as I can tell, the whole "the male bobbit worm gets his eggplant bitten off" thing came AFTER everything happened with John and Lorena Bobbitt.
Okay, so this made me think for a second because every version I know but *one* says it was the... "grapes" of Ouranos that got sliced off, not the "eggplant." Which, if this worm's kin were known to do the whole split to reproduce thing already, might be where that came from. Unfortunately, it would appear that the naming of this species predates our understanding of sperm and reproduction in general. So yeah, probably not that. (If anyone's confused, the tl;dr is that we had no clue what exactly a male contributed and a female contributed to making offspring. We had guesses about eggs because many creatures lay eggs we can see with the naked eye, but no clue on sperm because they're always microscopic. Generally it was presumed _something_ is provided by the male, just nothing specific. Additionally, we had no clue what sperm even were for the longest time once we could use microscopes to see them, such that Europeans even widely believed sperm to be a separate species of microorganisms that lived inside us until the latter half of the nineteenth century.)
Was about to say, that to my knowledge, it was Uranus' scrotum that was severed. Although that doesn't mean, that it's mutually exclusive. I think I read in a few places, that eunuchs had both cut off. But I also remember, that, while the Sea foam created by that gave birth to Aphrodite, the drops of Uranus' blood, that fell to the earth, became the Furies (and apparently also the centaurs?), so maybe that's a connection? My only other ideas would be, it's called after Aphrodite, because the the Guy who discovered them found them really pretty, or maybe its naming goes back to the same root as the term "hermaphrodite"? Or maybe, and this thought came literally while I was writing the above, the Guy who discovered them named them like this, because he thought the worm has a similar temper to the goddess?
2:08 Just in case anyone was wondering, the "gen. et sp. nov." stands for "genus et species novus", meaning it's a new genus and species described for the first time in that particular publication!
@@pierreabbat6157 Good point, I'm not fully familiar with the details of Latin declension. From a little googling, I think in this case it would be the neuter "nova"?
I thought it meant "genus established species novel", as in, already known genus new species. I wonder what the actual term for a new species of a known genus would be then.
AFAIK only the part containing the complete digestive system can regenerate. And it should be the same with other worms, so number 9 might not be true.
@@nikibordeauxI googled also for the topic. At least most earthworm species cannot regenerate fully, but some species can grow back either end, but I did not find any that could regrow both ends from the same cut position and thus would be able to grow to two complete worms after being cut. But some non-earthworm species of worms can regrow, one extreme case (planarium flatworm) even from just a section that is 1/20th of its original length.
@@nikibordeaux true but I think for some worm species lacking a centralized system of some kind, somewhat analogous to a brain, they can actually regenerate into two worms when split.
As far as I know, earth worms have ganglia along their bodies. And the head end of the worms have a slightly larger and crucial ganglion. So only the head part can regenerate and only if that part is big enough. Imagine a head piece that is to short to move or eat. Flatworms can be pressed through a strainer and every piece can regenerate 😊
@snekysneks LOL. It was before a lot of the import bans, so fish were cheaper. I know he ate a flame angel, yellow tang, purple tang, powder blue tang, some type of green and red wrasse, and a maroon clownfish. There were probably others too but I was young and don't remember them all. These days, that would be thousands of dollars of damage from the tangs alone, but the yellow tang was under $100 when we bought it back then.
6:28 Hi there! i'm a spanish speaker and i wanted to tell you that it's ok if you can't roll your Rs, as it's still understandable what where you trying to say. I also wanted to mention that in spanish, double Ls are pronounced as lla (yah), lle (yeh), lli (yeeh), llo (yoh) and llu (yooh), so Vallejo is pronounced Vah-yeh-ho with "lle" as the stressed syllable. I hope this info helps!
I was so terrified when I met one of those in a Sea/reef based game that released recently called "Another Crab's treasure" where Bobbit Worms are an enemy that appears there and there and that is how I first learned of them which lead me to trying to find out more about them.
I think it would be based on their habit of going in and out of their homes as the day progressed into night and back. Bobbit sounds like Bobbing which is an in/out up/down motion.
Bobbit worms are awesome, I’ll always love the story of Barry. The dude that just stowed away in a coral shipment for an aquarium, stealthily killed everything in their tank beneath people’s noses, and became so infamous that they got their own exhibit. Absolute legend.
11:48 this is straight up not true. if you cut an earthworm in half it dies, it does not create 2 worms. if you cut it in the right place, the head section might survive and regrow its tail, but the tail just dies, it does not regrow another worm.
@@Inarode Saaaame..... Some worms do have greater powers of regeneration,n especially flatworms, but I'm pretty sure most annelids can't become two separate organisms when cut up, the back half dies, the front half can regenerate. Bobbit worms look to be pretty specialised and asymmetric front to back, so I doubt the rear half regenerates when cut in two...
the look of bobbits is nightmare fuel, but considering how theyre like 2, maybe 3 inches wide they arent the biggest threat compared to something like a bull shark or a goliath grouper
A bull shark literally just attacked 3 people in one day in my hometown, two women lost their hands and a leg each, Mr “they’re not that dangerous “ There’s been several other attacks here as well, at least one fatal in 2005.
😬 yeah not my finest moment. everyone please disregard the compleat idiot, past me. I'll learn to fact check more next time, or better yet not say anything. wellp, time to lose sleep over this, thaks though, also, I'm so sorry 😓.
their eyes are below their top three antenna things (forgot term) and above their retractable jaws (they are very small and I cannot describe exactly where they are since the Bobbitt worms face is so goofy.
wanted to also throw out that Im also someone who is chronically ill since you mentioned it helps to know other people are out there dealing with it - it's so hard and I appreciate the work youve been able to do so far.
That's hilarious how they telephone gamed "mating habits" from Lorena. 😅Also nuts how little we actually know. ALSO didn't need to think about how long they really are. 😵💫
Hearing what those aquarists had to do to remove that worm was much more terrifying then the actual worm, not only is moving all the coral and animals a pain in the rear but also all the stress it causes to the organisms and how it would disrupt all the biological activity going on in there would have been a pain. It probably took a while for all the organisms to recover fully, stress like that can be a big deal for some animals. I mean I deal in freshwater but If I had to do that sort of thing to some of my planted aquariums some of my plants would take months to recover.
Throwback to the time when some dude got a mantis shrimp and another got a bobbit worm as a hitchhiker in his live rock. As a freshwater keeper I never get such cool hitchhikers
Given Aphrodite is honoured as a goddess of war (Heck, look at her Hades II sprite, she got [Hades I] Ares' warpaint + a spear) and also has some association with the sea.... it kinda makes sense ngl?
@@felixmervamee7834 to be fair, the Mediterranean was about as peaceful of a place then as the Near East is now, and everyone had their own patron deities. Seeing as you wouldn't want The ONLY War God to be the one who's supposedly backing your enemy, it's only Natural that your favourite God is a War God. Some just did it as a hobby, others did it recreationally, and others were like Hestia and just stayed home to take care of your family while you got on a floating -death trap- battlefield and went off to ram and capture other floating battlefields until you reached a grounded battlefield from which to attack the enemy's city.
Literally out of my mouth before you spoke, "I don't know, I think he's kind of cute!" He's got that sparkly holographing! And those cute little claws, and that little mouth!
Note: Frank may have studied Campbell’s Hero’s Journey or Monomyth, but he *hated it.* Dune *utterly savages* the idea, and Frank is on the record expressing his utter contempt for it.
@@Devilot109yep, and as demonstrated by Leto II, Frank's opinion of fascism was "Humanity should be made to feel nothing but revulsion for it all the way down to their bones" Which is only "slightly" more scathing than his deconstruction of most other political ideologies.
Sand striker is what I always have known them called. They are able to break into segments and those segments are able to grow into a full independent worm.
Several papers have been written about the bobbit worm, but the name wasn't coined until Dr. Terry Gosliner coined it in the 1996 book Coral Reef Animals of the Indo-Pacific.
I second the request for a video on Oarfish. They're so cool looking! Some folks think they might have been the inspiration for sea serpents because they're so long. (Me, I think it was giant squid for both the Kraken & sea serpents)
One night my dad and I went to look for crabs off a dock on the coast of Vancouver island. At first we thought it was an eel, but looking closer we realized there were two worm like creatures that almost look like centipedes with little fins instead of legs. We had no clue what they were so we almost thought they were aliens. They were atracted to our light and swam around in mesmerizing circles for half an hour. The next day we talked to some marine biologists at a museum who showed us a book full of polycheat worms and I have been obsessed with them ever since.
I always thought they were called "Bobbitt" worms as a reference to "bop-it" because for some reason it made sense to me that a long creature jutting out of the water would be adjacent to the game in some way. ...I don't know why 😂
To be honest, I was surprised when you called it ugly because I was in love with the holo drip (as the kids say) from the start. And I got the nail polish joke, great way to do a comparison of holographic vs iridescent.
The palolo worm, of which some people in the Pacific eat the epitoke as a delicacy, is in the family Eunicidae. The epitoke (I pronounce it like "epitome", but I'm not sure how anyone else does) is the part that detaches to spawn.
Bobbit worms Irl: scary looking, but unlikely to deal any real lasting damage. Terraria Calamity Bobbit worms: kill divers who get even remotely close to where they lurk on walls or the abyssal floor, and can easily cause jumpscares.
The way I SCREAMED when I saw this in my feed. I’m happy to see you making more content! Don’t push yourself too hard, we know you’ve been struggling lately. Still, it’s fantastic to see my favorite biology RUclipsr!!
My already favorite eclectic internet marine biologist has just ascended even higher in my nonexistent points ranking with that quick reference to Trogdor. Octopus Lady, you are a legend.
6:42 that's one hell of a first line for an article! Bobbitts worm is a mix between Mongolian death worm, Graboids from Tremors, bugs from Starship Troopers and a rainbow, a dangerous rainbow like in Mario Kart😅😅
i remember hearing about the bobbitt worm incident in the aquarium on some "UNSOLVED MYSTERIES" show when i was little, coming back to it now it's funny to know that it was just one long, hungry boi X3
11:30 I think it's notable too that people may overestimate the size in their minds when they hear that length. From what I've seen, these worms get long but they are surprisingly skinny. Not much mass to them at all. It's not like a nine foot python or moray eel.
hi there!! I started watching your videos about a year ago and i’m an aspiring marine veterinarian! I love your videos and they are helping me get a head start on my education of marine life before I start college next year (without being super boring)!! Please keep making videos!! ❤❤
Man, I love your videos ever since I discovered them! You’re an amazing explainer of a lot of these “higher level” biology topics, and it’s super fun to watch! As a suggestion, it would be awesome if you ever did research/made a video on sea spiders. They’re incredible organisms. They are nowhere near related to land-spiders really, have something like 1 muscle cell in each leg to move it, and use the movement of their stomach spread into their LEGS to move around. And get incredibly large in the cold arctic oceans. Sorry, gushing. But would be cool to see you cover them in the future. Have a great day if you see this!
Fantasy nerds like me are definitely aware of the variations on the word worm! I think I've mostly seen it standardized that wurms with a U usually mean long snake-like creatures, either terrestrial or aquatic, and wyrms with a Y usually mean more draconic creatures. I think in D&D Great Wyrm is even an honorable title for an old and powerful dragon.
I remember when they were called sand strikers. I still call them that, but accept that the internet was always going to favour the more salacious option. I don't hate "Bobbit worm" as such, I just think it's the kind of name that should only be used in conversations where we are also speaking of floaty potatoes, panda whales and majestic sea flap flaps. Though tbf to the internet, a quick google search just now returned more articles than I would have expected calling them sand strikers. Maybe I am not as much of an isolated holdout as I thought.
Your voice and your self made mental distance from things that are gross, brutal or not good for every soul, make you an adorable personality. I am in awe of the wonders that exist such as you and your work and effort. I am truly thankful
I spent the whole video trying to remember where i had heard the name bobbit worm before until you pulled up the thread of the man detailing his saga to get one out of his tank
Nope, after Aproditos, later Hermaphroditos... the former version did look just like Aphrodite though, but had a penis instead, usually depicted prominently and erect in artworks too.
@louisvictor3473 Oh, cool! I had no idea. I shouldn't have assumed, or I should've done my research first. Thanks for pointing that out! I learned something today 👍
Thank you for doing all the research and sharing your info, I'm so intrigued by these worms! I hope you find out more and share it with us in the future, thank you so much and take care!
I'm not sure how accurate this anecdote is, but I've heard that the developers at BioWare used the Bobbitt worm as a source of inspiration for their take on the "giant worm" trope with Thresher Maws (Mass Effect video game trilogy).
Oh I remember that too, I think the source is an interview IGN made back when Mass Effect 3 was about to launch, you can probably still find it to check.
I WAS LITERALLY ABOUT TO COMMENT ABOUT THE 2003 FORUM oh my god i'm SO glad you mentioned it, because it literally was insane to read. love the video!! thank you so much for sharing more about these weird little guys!! also, wishing you well. i know how medication can be such a struggle sometimes
This worm's holographic body was exactly what gave me inspiration for one of my recent artworks. Though I'm ashamed to say I called it iridescence instead. But I corrected it in the captions and description XD I'll remember this going forward though. Thanks for the definitions.
Nice to see you correcting yourself when faced with new information, but unfortunately in this case you accidentally corrected yourself to be wrong. Bobbit worms are in fact iridescent, "Holographic" as described in this video is pretty much only used in that sense by the nail polish industry. That being said, I can see why people who've never been exposed to the materials science concept would assume the marketing definition was correct. The scientific definitions of holography and iridescence have nothing to do with what shades of light will be reproduced.
I love your videos!!! I always learn so much 💙💙💙you make everything so exciting! (not that anyone could easily make ocean creatures unexciting) but the way you make your videos gets me so hooked!
i appreciate all the research u put into ur topics and always makes me sad that a lot of animals aren’t thoroughly researched bc of lack of funding towards science, although it’s nice to know we don’t know everything about our oceans and it’s always possible for us to learn
"There's no footage of what happens when bobbit worms pull prey into their layer to eat, but I want that SO. BAD." "Here's footage of bobbit worms eating, skip if you don't wanna see it I know I don't like seeing it" WHICH IS IT OCTOPUS LADY????
There's a song I like called OCTOPUS.LADY and your channel comes up when I look up the song here on RUclips. Now I just unironically watch your channel. I'm not sure how I ended up like this, but I'm okay with it.
Your videos always make me smile. As a person also in possession of a "meat sack of doom", I know how tough it is some days to convince yourself to do anything. Thanks for sharing, and being awesome... and being a big 'ol greek mythology nerd and making me snort laugh until my husband came running to see if i was okay. I had the same thought about the worm name, lol. You're a treasure!
Omg I forgot how much I love your videos! I love the information, and your presentation and sense of humor! When you had the little drawing of a person, "Drawing Blood" I giggled, and when you put Timothee Chalomet's pic beside the worm...I actually had to stop the video and watch that again!😂😂😂 I hope you feel better soon! Take care of yourself! 😊
I found you tonight at 3:30am and you are now one of my favourite RUclipsrs like top 5 alongside Lindsay Nikole, Hank green, John green and trxie Mattel Ps. I love the Christine (simplynailogical) reference lol
I've binged watched a bunch of your videos. Your humor is fantastic, delivery amazing, humility incredible! Your cartoon personality a real blast! I love it! Thank you for humor and education for an old fart recovering with the phone as my company!
Grammatically and per rules of binomial nomenclature that I am aware off, Aphroditois would not be directly derived from Aphrodite, but Aphroditus/Aphroditos, which is the grammatical masculine form of Aphrodite, and an earlier name of a different deity (the later form/name of the deity is Hermaphroditus/Hermaphroditos, an intersex offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite). And I think the genitive/possessive case is the clue to the intended meaning (in English that is the 's you put to demonstrate possession, but more generic than that). The original name Pallas gave to the species was Nereis aphroditois, when he thought it was a type of Bristle snake. Nereis is another way of saying a sea nymph, so Nereis Aphroditois means "Aphroditos' Sea Nymph". Aphroditus depiction is essentially "looks like Aphrodite, but with a surprise penis". And it seems it was rather common to depict this deity as an aphrodite looking being lifiting their skirt/dress to reveal their erect penis. A worm that tries to make it look like there isn't there but that at times reveals itself by shooting up all erect like, Aphroditus' Sea Nymph, I think everyone connected the dots, i can shut up now.
Stick around until the end, folks! There's an after-credits scene!
If an Earth worm is cut in half only the front half will regenerate
I'm so sad I don't know the first thing about reading scientific papers. Would love to see if those Spanish-speaking scientists learnt anything new about the bobbit worm 🎉
Love to see some greek mythology beef going on in the scientific world.
AND IT WAS AMAZING!
If you don’t want to watch credits skip to 18:35
This is the definition of “would you love me if I was a worm??”
my wife asked me that and I said, "well what if I was a spider?" she said yes and so did i🤣
"Would you love me if i was a worm?"
"Babe I love all worms"
@@Sepi-chu_loves_moths Lol
all worms deserve to be loved
What if I was a "wyrm?" . Would you still love me If I was a giant serpent of death ]:?
The holo taco reference and your dedication to explain the difference between holographic and iridescent were very much appreciated
the fact that your zoology book uses "nubbins" makes me stupid happy lol
something else you might like (albeit not zoological related); in hexadecimal IP addresses (the ones with letters mixed with numbers and colons every 4 digits), the groupings of four digits are called nybble because a group of 8 digits is a byte. :D (And one digit is a bit. So pay attention to the "we give you super speed internet!" ads. The difference between 1 gigaBYTE per second and one gigaBIT per second is very, very big.)
@@5peciesunkn0wn i knew about bit and byte and i am now delighted to know about nybbles 😂
I was like "hehe nubbins"
@@5peciesunkn0wnyummy
@@5peciesunkn0wn a nybble!!!! 🥰🥰🥰
You should DEFINITELY do a separate video specifically about the bobbit Worm Chronicle. It is SO FUNNY. The level of wacky, looney tunes hijinks he performs JUST to try to get the bobbit worm out to capture is is funny in and of itself. My favorite part is that at one point he thinks he got it, and then you look at the thread's page count and it's like page 5 of 14. Truly a masterclass in story telling.
That thread is genuinely one of the best true stories I have ever read.
Hearing about Bobbit worms hitchhiking into salt water tanks makes me grateful I stuck to freshwater/brackish. Tearing everything apart to look for a murder worm really does sound like an absolute nightmare.
I was thinking that myself... sheesh! I can only imagine the stress of that one... It was bad enough with "Surprise snails"!
@@KarmatheCorgi Real. Bobbit worm is out here making surprise bladder snail infestations seem like a walk in the park
@@SageAsuka I like my bladder snails. There's only a couple bigger ones around normally, but if I see an explosion of babies, something really went wrong and my tank needs urgent attention.
@@tchotchonyt2442 they're like a reverse canary in a coal mine lol.
Sometimes we also get small mantis shrimp that hitch hike in and take out unlucky crustaceans and snails.
I totally expected the Sarlac or whatever the desert sand pit thing was in Star Wars to be inspired at least partially by bobbit worms (though antlions could've been enough), but Dune's sandworms? Why? They're basically big hungry earthworms, they have pretty much nothing in common with sandworms except for being worms and burrowing.
Yeah! Bobbit worms are fast ambush predators that can eat as much as they can. Dune sandworms are slow, relatively docile creatures that are basically the worm version of a whale. They literally eat blatantly named sand plankton in the ground!
I have another theory about why the worm got named 'aphroditois'. Hesiod's poem says that Aphrodite was born from sea foam produced by the severed.... erm.... eggplant of Uranus that got thrown into the ocean. May have been a scientist leaning in to the bobbit reference.
Ooh, that's an interesting idea, but I don't think that's the case. The scientist who gave this worm the name 'Eunice aphroditois' did so aaaalll the way back in 1788. And as near as I can tell, the whole "the male bobbit worm gets his eggplant bitten off" thing came AFTER everything happened with John and Lorena Bobbitt.
I don't remember it being the 🍆 but the 🥜
Okay, so this made me think for a second because every version I know but *one* says it was the... "grapes" of Ouranos that got sliced off, not the "eggplant." Which, if this worm's kin were known to do the whole split to reproduce thing already, might be where that came from.
Unfortunately, it would appear that the naming of this species predates our understanding of sperm and reproduction in general. So yeah, probably not that.
(If anyone's confused, the tl;dr is that we had no clue what exactly a male contributed and a female contributed to making offspring. We had guesses about eggs because many creatures lay eggs we can see with the naked eye, but no clue on sperm because they're always microscopic. Generally it was presumed _something_ is provided by the male, just nothing specific. Additionally, we had no clue what sperm even were for the longest time once we could use microscopes to see them, such that Europeans even widely believed sperm to be a separate species of microorganisms that lived inside us until the latter half of the nineteenth century.)
Was about to say, that to my knowledge, it was Uranus' scrotum that was severed. Although that doesn't mean, that it's mutually exclusive. I think I read in a few places, that eunuchs had both cut off.
But I also remember, that, while the Sea foam created by that gave birth to Aphrodite, the drops of Uranus' blood, that fell to the earth, became the Furies (and apparently also the centaurs?), so maybe that's a connection?
My only other ideas would be, it's called after Aphrodite, because the the Guy who discovered them found them really pretty, or maybe its naming goes back to the same root as the term "hermaphrodite"?
Or maybe, and this thought came literally while I was writing the above, the Guy who discovered them named them like this, because he thought the worm has a similar temper to the goddess?
@@OctopusLady Apparently it was named from a Prussian zoologist, Peter Simon Pallas, perhaps he just had a sense of humor.
8:10 i got the reference 😭
Me too! I recognized the nail polish before she even said holo taco! Lol
I GOT THE REF!! IT UNLOCKED A FORGOTTEN MEMORY FOR ME LOLL
2:08 Just in case anyone was wondering, the "gen. et sp. nov." stands for "genus et species novus", meaning it's a new genus and species described for the first time in that particular publication!
It couldn't be "novus", which is masculine singular, but what form is it? "nova" (n.pl.), "novae" (f.pl.), or "novi" (m.pl.)?
@@pierreabbat6157 Good point, I'm not fully familiar with the details of Latin declension. From a little googling, I think in this case it would be the neuter "nova"?
Thank you.
I thought it meant "genus established species novel", as in, already known genus new species. I wonder what the actual term for a new species of a known genus would be then.
@@GoodrichthysEskdalensis I think it would just be "sp. nov." without reference to the genus.
Common misconception actually, earthworms do not actually regenerate from both ends, only one
AFAIK only the part containing the complete digestive system can regenerate. And it should be the same with other worms, so number 9 might not be true.
@@nikibordeauxI googled also for the topic. At least most earthworm species cannot regenerate fully, but some species can grow back either end, but I did not find any that could regrow both ends from the same cut position and thus would be able to grow to two complete worms after being cut. But some non-earthworm species of worms can regrow, one extreme case (planarium flatworm) even from just a section that is 1/20th of its original length.
@@nikibordeaux true but I think for some worm species lacking a centralized system of some kind, somewhat analogous to a brain, they can actually regenerate into two worms when split.
As far as I know, earth worms have ganglia along their bodies. And the head end of the worms have a slightly larger and crucial ganglion. So only the head part can regenerate and only if that part is big enough. Imagine a head piece that is to short to move or eat. Flatworms can be pressed through a strainer and every piece can regenerate 😊
Yeah, bobbitt worms are a problem for reefkeepers. We had one in our tank. It was over 4 ft long and ate hundreds of dollars worth of fish.
Oh, that's rough, buddy.
How'd you manage to get rid of it? Did you have to take apart the whole tank?
@@OctopusLady I'm not sure how my dad got rid of it. It was when I was pretty young. I was probably 6, and I'm 21 now. The tank is older than I am
hundreds of dollars? so like, two fish? /j
@snekysneks LOL. It was before a lot of the import bans, so fish were cheaper. I know he ate a flame angel, yellow tang, purple tang, powder blue tang, some type of green and red wrasse, and a maroon clownfish. There were probably others too but I was young and don't remember them all. These days, that would be thousands of dollars of damage from the tangs alone, but the yellow tang was under $100 when we bought it back then.
@@OctopusLadyyou basically do. Bobbit worms will hide under the substrate and if you try to remove them they tuck themselves deeper inside.
6:28 Hi there! i'm a spanish speaker and i wanted to tell you that it's ok if you can't roll your Rs, as it's still understandable what where you trying to say. I also wanted to mention that in spanish, double Ls are pronounced as lla (yah), lle (yeh), lli (yeeh), llo (yoh) and llu (yooh), so Vallejo is pronounced Vah-yeh-ho with "lle" as the stressed syllable. I hope this info helps!
Honestly if Aphrodite doesn’t think a bobbit worm is the pinnacle of beauty then she CLEARLY needs to reevaluate her tastes
The holographic sparkles really are pretty!
I find them beautiful in an alien way. I especially like their faces. All scrunchy & cute. Their bodies are just lovely with that holographic effect.
It's literally gold with holographic rainbow sparkles
I was so terrified when I met one of those in a Sea/reef based game that released recently called "Another Crab's treasure" where Bobbit Worms are an enemy that appears there and there and that is how I first learned of them which lead me to trying to find out more about them.
NOT THE SIMPLY NAILOGICAL REF WITH THE HOLOTACO
💅✨
I think it would be based on their habit of going in and out of their homes as the day progressed into night and back. Bobbit sounds like Bobbing which is an in/out up/down motion.
Thats waaaaay to low. I almost thougt i had to be the one. Good job, taccos away
Somebody needs to send this video link to Simply. She’ll love it.
What?
“I’m so full from glue yum.” - The Bobbit Worm from the Bobbit Worm Chronicles
Bobbit worms are awesome, I’ll always love the story of Barry. The dude that just stowed away in a coral shipment for an aquarium, stealthily killed everything in their tank beneath people’s noses, and became so infamous that they got their own exhibit. Absolute legend.
11:48 this is straight up not true. if you cut an earthworm in half it dies, it does not create 2 worms. if you cut it in the right place, the head section might survive and regrow its tail, but the tail just dies, it does not regrow another worm.
Came here to say the same thing, they really can't regenerate the way that "fact" says they can. They mostly just die
@@Inarode Saaaame..... Some worms do have greater powers of regeneration,n especially flatworms, but I'm pretty sure most annelids can't become two separate organisms when cut up, the back half dies, the front half can regenerate. Bobbit worms look to be pretty specialised and asymmetric front to back, so I doubt the rear half regenerates when cut in two...
the look of bobbits is nightmare fuel, but considering how theyre like 2, maybe 3 inches wide they arent the biggest threat compared to something like a bull shark or a goliath grouper
dude, none of those animals want anything to do with you. they are only dangerous if you're being an idiot.
A bull shark literally just attacked 3 people in one day in my hometown, two women lost their hands and a leg each, Mr “they’re not that dangerous “
There’s been several other attacks here as well, at least one fatal in 2005.
😬 yeah not my finest moment. everyone please disregard the compleat idiot, past me. I'll learn to fact check more next time, or better yet not say anything. wellp, time to lose sleep over this, thaks though, also, I'm so sorry 😓.
heck, they aren't even a threat compared to smaller sharks like reef sharks and nursing sharks
Actually these worms can climb inside you and bind to your spine to control you.
Please see the documentary series Stargategate SG1
their eyes are below their top three antenna things (forgot term) and above their retractable jaws (they are very small and I cannot describe exactly where they are since the Bobbitt worms face is so goofy.
wanted to also throw out that Im also someone who is chronically ill since you mentioned it helps to know other people are out there dealing with it - it's so hard and I appreciate the work youve been able to do so far.
14:56 there you can see a shrimp (or something similar) praying with their claws held up high to summon their worm demon lord
Wow, I learned a lot about Dune today!
That's hilarious how they telephone gamed "mating habits" from Lorena. 😅Also nuts how little we actually know. ALSO didn't need to think about how long they really are. 😵💫
Hearing what those aquarists had to do to remove that worm was much more terrifying then the actual worm, not only is moving all the coral and animals a pain in the rear but also all the stress it causes to the organisms and how it would disrupt all the biological activity going on in there would have been a pain. It probably took a while for all the organisms to recover fully, stress like that can be a big deal for some animals.
I mean I deal in freshwater but If I had to do that sort of thing to some of my planted aquariums some of my plants would take months to recover.
Throwback to the time when some dude got a mantis shrimp and another got a bobbit worm as a hitchhiker in his live rock. As a freshwater keeper I never get such cool hitchhikers
At most i get snails
@@refindoazhar1507 Snails can be scary too tho... Dont underestimate those slimy lil guys, you will deeply regret it
Mfw Pallas secretly being Athena naming a worm after Aprhodite is the funniest wild theory that will now forever live rent free in my head
Given Aphrodite is honoured as a goddess of war (Heck, look at her Hades II sprite, she got [Hades I] Ares' warpaint + a spear) and also has some association with the sea.... it kinda makes sense ngl?
I struggle to find Greek divinities who *aren't* honoured as bringers of war :b
I'm pretty sure everyone's a war god for the spartans, except for Athena who's a war god for athens
@@felixmervamee7834 to be fair, the Mediterranean was about as peaceful of a place then as the Near East is now, and everyone had their own patron deities. Seeing as you wouldn't want The ONLY War God to be the one who's supposedly backing your enemy, it's only Natural that your favourite God is a War God. Some just did it as a hobby, others did it recreationally, and others were like Hestia and just stayed home to take care of your family while you got on a floating -death trap- battlefield and went off to ram and capture other floating battlefields until you reached a grounded battlefield from which to attack the enemy's city.
Literally out of my mouth before you spoke, "I don't know, I think he's kind of cute!" He's got that sparkly holographing! And those cute little claws, and that little mouth!
Oh hi Cristine Wormlogical
Shouldn’t that be Simply Wormlogical? 😜
Holooo
YES I CAME TO THE COMMENTS TO FIND THE PEOPLE THAT GOT THE REFERENCE ❤
@@Fairygoblin777 Holo... It's me... 😢 💿💿
Note: Frank may have studied Campbell’s Hero’s Journey or Monomyth, but he *hated it.* Dune *utterly savages* the idea, and Frank is on the record expressing his utter contempt for it.
Basically, Dune’s take on the Hero’s Journey can be summarized as “Hey, this pretty fascist when you get down to it.”
@@Devilot109yep, and as demonstrated by Leto II, Frank's opinion of fascism was "Humanity should be made to feel nothing but revulsion for it all the way down to their bones"
Which is only "slightly" more scathing than his deconstruction of most other political ideologies.
14:25 That worm should be named "Rasputin" from now on.
My thoughts exactly.
Ra-ra-rasputin, you're now a worm, an ocean being.
@@derskalde4973 You are a worm that stalks it's food!
What an EXCELLENT name!!!
Sand striker is what I always have known them called. They are able to break into segments and those segments are able to grow into a full independent worm.
Surely there is a paper describing the bobbitt worm that predates that... international incedent.
Several papers have been written about the bobbit worm, but the name wasn't coined until Dr. Terry Gosliner coined it in the 1996 book Coral Reef Animals of the Indo-Pacific.
Hold up. You're telling me this category of worms has the equivalent of unmanned drones for "eggplants"?? That's so cool.
I thought the scuba divers named them that because they thought it looked like a severed "eggplant."
Hi Octopus Lady, can you please do a video on Oarfish and Cuttlefish? They’re some of my favorite oceanic organisms.
I second the request for a video on Oarfish. They're so cool looking! Some folks think they might have been the inspiration for sea serpents because they're so long. (Me, I think it was giant squid for both the Kraken & sea serpents)
I can't get past the use of the word "Nubbins" in a text book. This information has given me the resolve to carry on.
Right?! Scientific material talking about nubbins is the greatest thing ever.
One night my dad and I went to look for crabs off a dock on the coast of Vancouver island. At first we thought it was an eel, but looking closer we realized there were two worm like creatures that almost look like centipedes with little fins instead of legs. We had no clue what they were so we almost thought they were aliens. They were atracted to our light and swam around in mesmerizing circles for half an hour. The next day we talked to some marine biologists at a museum who showed us a book full of polycheat worms and I have been obsessed with them ever since.
Don’t you just love it when the octopus lady goes on a Greek mythology rant?
Yes
Crossover with OSP when?
I always thought they were called "Bobbitt" worms as a reference to "bop-it" because for some reason it made sense to me that a long creature jutting out of the water would be adjacent to the game in some way.
...I don't know why 😂
Nubbins! So many many fuzzy nubbins! And teh trogdor cameo is brilliant, thank you! (She did and she was trying to start it all up again I am sure)
big fan of the nubbins!
To be honest, I was surprised when you called it ugly because I was in love with the holo drip (as the kids say) from the start. And I got the nail polish joke, great way to do a comparison of holographic vs iridescent.
The palolo worm, of which some people in the Pacific eat the epitoke as a delicacy, is in the family Eunicidae. The epitoke (I pronounce it like "epitome", but I'm not sure how anyone else does) is the part that detaches to spawn.
Bobbit worms Irl: scary looking, but unlikely to deal any real lasting damage.
Terraria Calamity Bobbit worms: kill divers who get even remotely close to where they lurk on walls or the abyssal floor, and can easily cause jumpscares.
The way I SCREAMED when I saw this in my feed. I’m happy to see you making more content! Don’t push yourself too hard, we know you’ve been struggling lately. Still, it’s fantastic to see my favorite biology RUclipsr!!
My already favorite eclectic internet marine biologist has just ascended even higher in my nonexistent points ranking with that quick reference to Trogdor.
Octopus Lady, you are a legend.
I gotta give it to Pallas for making one of the most creative puns ever
6:42 that's one hell of a first line for an article! Bobbitts worm is a mix between Mongolian death worm, Graboids from Tremors, bugs from Starship Troopers and a rainbow, a dangerous rainbow like in Mario Kart😅😅
i remember hearing about the bobbitt worm incident in the aquarium on some "UNSOLVED MYSTERIES" show when i was little, coming back to it now it's funny to know that it was just one long, hungry boi X3
11:30 I think it's notable too that people may overestimate the size in their minds when they hear that length. From what I've seen, these worms get long but they are surprisingly skinny. Not much mass to them at all. It's not like a nine foot python or moray eel.
I totally believe Athena would name a funky lil sea worm after Aphrodite as a slight.
Great, now i want to see what the bobbit worms do after successfully catching prey.
hi there!! I started watching your videos about a year ago and i’m an aspiring marine veterinarian! I love your videos and they are helping me get a head start on my education of marine life before I start college next year (without being super boring)!! Please keep making videos!! ❤❤
Man, I love your videos ever since I discovered them! You’re an amazing explainer of a lot of these “higher level” biology topics, and it’s super fun to watch!
As a suggestion, it would be awesome if you ever did research/made a video on sea spiders. They’re incredible organisms. They are nowhere near related to land-spiders really, have something like 1 muscle cell in each leg to move it, and use the movement of their stomach spread into their LEGS to move around. And get incredibly large in the cold arctic oceans.
Sorry, gushing. But would be cool to see you cover them in the future. Have a great day if you see this!
Fantasy nerds like me are definitely aware of the variations on the word worm! I think I've mostly seen it standardized that wurms with a U usually mean long snake-like creatures, either terrestrial or aquatic, and wyrms with a Y usually mean more draconic creatures. I think in D&D Great Wyrm is even an honorable title for an old and powerful dragon.
i gasped so loud when you mentioned greek mythology (WHICH IS MY FAVORITE THING IN THE WHOLE WORLD) in this vd ur now one of my fav youtubers omg
I remember when they were called sand strikers. I still call them that, but accept that the internet was always going to favour the more salacious option.
I don't hate "Bobbit worm" as such, I just think it's the kind of name that should only be used in conversations where we are also speaking of floaty potatoes, panda whales and majestic sea flap flaps.
Though tbf to the internet, a quick google search just now returned more articles than I would have expected calling them sand strikers. Maybe I am not as much of an isolated holdout as I thought.
I'd never heard sand striker before, but it sounds cool.
Sea graboids
Your voice and your self made mental distance from things that are gross, brutal or not good for every soul, make you an adorable personality. I am in awe of the wonders that exist such as you and your work and effort. I am truly thankful
That bobbit worm forum story is one of my favorites. Equal parts hilarious and fascinating.
I could be wrong, but I thought earthworms do not regrow if you cut them in half. That that was a myth itself.
I spent the whole video trying to remember where i had heard the name bobbit worm before until you pulled up the thread of the man detailing his saga to get one out of his tank
1:53 They named THAT after Aphrodite??? WHAT?!
Edit: A replier pointed out, it is actually named after Aphroditos (Hermaphroditos), not Aphrodite.
Nope, after Aproditos, later Hermaphroditos... the former version did look just like Aphrodite though, but had a penis instead, usually depicted prominently and erect in artworks too.
@louisvictor3473 Oh, cool! I had no idea. I shouldn't have assumed, or I should've done my research first. Thanks for pointing that out! I learned something today 👍
simplynailogical reference ftw
Thank you for doing all the research and sharing your info, I'm so intrigued by these worms! I hope you find out more and share it with us in the future, thank you so much and take care!
8:09 I understood that reference. Sister's coming in clutch with usless info!
18:53 IT IS BEAUTIFUL.
I'm not sure how accurate this anecdote is, but I've heard that the developers at BioWare used the Bobbitt worm as a source of inspiration for their take on the "giant worm" trope with Thresher Maws (Mass Effect video game trilogy).
Oh I remember that too, I think the source is an interview IGN made back when Mass Effect 3 was about to launch, you can probably still find it to check.
Nail polish, halo taco, dune, entomology... along with the usual hilarious info, this vid has it all!
I'm totally here for the holo worms
16:45 First time I heard about this. Hope you're feeling better soon, TOL. ❤🙏
Gen. Et. Sp. Nov. Is just an abbreviation for a new genus and species once it's published.
I WAS LITERALLY ABOUT TO COMMENT ABOUT THE 2003 FORUM oh my god i'm SO glad you mentioned it, because it literally was insane to read. love the video!! thank you so much for sharing more about these weird little guys!! also, wishing you well. i know how medication can be such a struggle sometimes
1:28 thats their stubby legs/smol legs
This worm's holographic body was exactly what gave me inspiration for one of my recent artworks. Though I'm ashamed to say I called it iridescence instead. But I corrected it in the captions and description XD I'll remember this going forward though. Thanks for the definitions.
Nice to see you correcting yourself when faced with new information, but unfortunately in this case you accidentally corrected yourself to be wrong. Bobbit worms are in fact iridescent, "Holographic" as described in this video is pretty much only used in that sense by the nail polish industry.
That being said, I can see why people who've never been exposed to the materials science concept would assume the marketing definition was correct. The scientific definitions of holography and iridescence have nothing to do with what shades of light will be reproduced.
@@Avalyera Haha, oh well, thanks for the insight. I'll keep it in mind for the future should such a thing crop up again :)
Thanking for linking the Bobbitt written Chronicles. Great read
love the work you put into these, love marine invertebrates, and bio in general good stuff :>
I love your videos!!! I always learn so much 💙💙💙you make everything so exciting! (not that anyone could easily make ocean creatures unexciting) but the way you make your videos gets me so hooked!
i appreciate all the research u put into ur topics and always makes me sad that a lot of animals aren’t thoroughly researched bc of lack of funding towards science, although it’s nice to know we don’t know everything about our oceans and it’s always possible for us to learn
11:16 that sucker does NOT need to be that long. Nightmare fuel
How did I not get notified that you made this. I need more Octopus Lady in my life.... must watch again just to get algorithm working more better.
I am SOOO HAPPY to see a new episode from you, I was starting to worry! Thanks for all you do. :)
ty for the content hope the meds get better and take care.
"There's no footage of what happens when bobbit worms pull prey into their layer to eat, but I want that SO. BAD."
"Here's footage of bobbit worms eating, skip if you don't wanna see it I know I don't like seeing it"
WHICH IS IT OCTOPUS LADY????
The worm didn't pull into its layer though.
Your content is, as ever, incredible!
Chronic illness / pain here too 💔 sending gentle hugs
Love the video as always !!!!
There's a song I like called OCTOPUS.LADY and your channel comes up when I look up the song here on RUclips.
Now I just unironically watch your channel.
I'm not sure how I ended up like this, but I'm okay with it.
i get so happy when you post, hope your health is better at the moment 🙏🙏
7:31 until seeing this photo, i thought these worms were alot bigger. Like 1 foot long or smth
Your videos always make me smile. As a person also in possession of a "meat sack of doom", I know how tough it is some days to convince yourself to do anything. Thanks for sharing, and being awesome... and being a big 'ol greek mythology nerd and making me snort laugh until my husband came running to see if i was okay. I had the same thought about the worm name, lol. You're a treasure!
Omg I forgot how much I love your videos! I love the information, and your presentation and sense of humor! When you had the little drawing of a person, "Drawing Blood" I giggled, and when you put Timothee Chalomet's pic beside the worm...I actually had to stop the video and watch that again!😂😂😂 I hope you feel better soon! Take care of yourself! 😊
Thank you for another video, I really like your format.
Bobbit worms are super metal. Probably my favorite water borne terror.
I found you tonight at 3:30am and you are now one of my favourite RUclipsrs like top 5 alongside Lindsay Nikole, Hank green, John green and trxie Mattel
Ps. I love the Christine (simplynailogical) reference lol
I've binged watched a bunch of your videos. Your humor is fantastic, delivery amazing, humility incredible! Your cartoon personality a real blast! I love it! Thank you for humor and education for an old fart recovering with the phone as my company!
Love my surprise Octopus Lady videos! Glad you're feeling a little better, good luck with the new meds
Grammatically and per rules of binomial nomenclature that I am aware off, Aphroditois would not be directly derived from Aphrodite, but Aphroditus/Aphroditos, which is the grammatical masculine form of Aphrodite, and an earlier name of a different deity (the later form/name of the deity is Hermaphroditus/Hermaphroditos, an intersex offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite).
And I think the genitive/possessive case is the clue to the intended meaning (in English that is the 's you put to demonstrate possession, but more generic than that). The original name Pallas gave to the species was Nereis aphroditois, when he thought it was a type of Bristle snake. Nereis is another way of saying a sea nymph, so Nereis Aphroditois means "Aphroditos' Sea Nymph". Aphroditus depiction is essentially "looks like Aphrodite, but with a surprise penis". And it seems it was rather common to depict this deity as an aphrodite looking being lifiting their skirt/dress to reveal their erect penis. A worm that tries to make it look like there isn't there but that at times reveals itself by shooting up all erect like, Aphroditus' Sea Nymph, I think everyone connected the dots, i can shut up now.
Nubbins and ridges I love that description of the little legs like appendages