Science has a new unearthly minor on the blocking : A giant , mud - habitation , S - fuel , insect - like calamitous one dollar bill that looks like it might bristle out of your chest .
For the first time ever , scientist have found a lively giant shipworm ( Kuphus polythalamia ) in the Philippines . The 1.2 - beat - retentive ( 4 fundament ) shell casings of these creatures have been documented since the 18th C , however , they ’ve managed to obviate capture all these geezerhood .
" The plate are fairly common . But we have never had access to the animal living inside , " lead research worker Daniel Distel from Northeastern University said ina instruction .
The researchers managed to feel a few of these individuals alive after watch a documentary on Filipino television that designate a dingy laguna with these marine invertebrates popping out the top “ like carrots ” . They headed down to the localisation and care to bring one back to the lab where they washed it up , chiseled open its shell , and emptied its insect - similar body out onto a tray .
" Being present for the first encounter of an fauna like this is the faithful I will ever get to being a 19th - century naturalist , " said the report ’s senior author Margo Haygood , a inquiry professor of medicinal interpersonal chemistry at the University of Utah College of Pharmacy .
curiously satisfying : Introducing Kuphus polythalamia . Video by Marvin Altamia
Since this is the first hot specimen that ’s ever been studied , the research worker are not sure about a set of the species ' behavior and biology . However , they have already picked up on a few of its stranger habits .
Typically , a normal teredinid burrows into submerged trees that have washed into the ocean , or the Hull of ship , digesting the cellulose in the Sir Henry Wood with the aid of bacteria for its energy . However , this species seem to live only in the sulfur - rich mud of a lagune laden with waste wood that stink of rotting eggs .
Strangest of all , it does n’t " eat " in the traditional sense . It arrest its energy from a strange symbiotic kinship with the bacteria that lives in its gills . The bacterium uses hydrogen sulphide in the clay for push to raise organic carbon that feeds the teredinid .
" We suspected the giant shipworm was radically different from other wood - corrode shipworms , " contribute Haygood . " Finding the animal confirmed that . "
The study , by the University of Utah , Northeastern University , University of the Philippines , Sultan Kudarat State University , and Drexel University is publish in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
" I ’m quick for my closeup . " Marvin Altamia
