#polychaetes

protodrilus is exactly the worm you want to hire if you ever want to start some kind of evil lab or unethical psychological experiment! they have experience with all flavours of pain and torment and have went through every known torture method!!

...except for the ones that cause physical and mental harm of course

glorpiness rating: beating up homunc

some doodles from lectures,

nereid worms (Alitta sp.) prowling the tidal mudflats

nereids and other predatory polychaete worms (such as bobbit worms) are related to earthworms but have a more complex brain, leg-like parapodia, eyes, antennae, and sharp retractable jaws for grasping prey. I think of them as marine centipedes.

normally they stay out of sight buried in the mud, so I was a bit surprised to see these ones crawling out in the open, various smaller invertebrates scrambling out of the way to avoid becoming the worms’ next meal.

Everyone I know irl gets to hear me not shut up about this ever, so now it's time for my handful of mutuals to get this treatment! I've been obsessed with Fathomverse for the last few months. FathomVerse is a free app where you identify ocean animals in real underwater photos and contribute to a library of labeled images that helps scientists catalog and understand ocean life. They just updated the game so that there are minigames that let you work on any part of the labeling process, from looking at images and drawing boxes around critters, identifying the critters in the boxes and then helping confirm the IDs alongside fellow players. Not every image is as stunning as this pride siphonophore, but when you find one, it's special and you can save it and share it! Every so often you find something that not even the expert team that reviews the most puzzling photos can identify! There's training on how to identify different creatures and a very helpful discord with more identification tips for tricky ones. Please look at sea creatures with me!

A bristleworm (Polychaeta sp.) off the coast of Boca Raton, Florida, USA