Animals

Pigbutt worm: The deep-sea 'mystery blob' with the rump of a pig and a ballooned belly

Published

6m ago

Apr 27, 2024 / 1639 Views

Evan Walker

Name: Pigbutt worm (Chaetopterus pugaporcinus)

Where it lives: Central California (primarily around Monterey Bay) and the Channel Islands

What it eats: Marine snow (organic material that floats through the ocean)

Why it's awesome: This hazelnut-size worm is so strange that researchers didn't know how to categorize it when it was first collected by Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) scientists in 2001.

"I was instantly interested in this strange creature that looked like the rump of a pig from one side and Mick Jagger's lips from the other. Was it a larva that had grown to 10 times the normal size or something new?" Karen Osborn, a research zoologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and an adjunct scientist at MBARI, told Live Science via email.

Meet the pigbutt worm 🐷🪱When our team, including @OsbornLab, first spotted the unusual pigbutt worm (Chaetopterus pugaporcinus) a half mile below the ocean surface, they had a tough time determining how to categorize such a curious critter. pic.twitter.com/7fN9xDoHYmFebruary 29, 2024

Osborn was handed a little jar labeled "mystery blob" and was asked to figure out what it was. The species was officially described in 2007 from eight individuals collected from the mesopelagic zone — the region between 650 and 3,300 feet (200 to 1,000 meters) — of California's Monterey Bay.

Related: Skeleton panda sea squirt — the weird little creature that looks like baby panda dressed up for Halloween