Mary’s Monday Metazoan: Best name ever


It’s the Bone Eating Snot Flower Worm.

osedax

As a bonus, it’s also one of those species where the large adult forms are all females, and the males have been reduced to a tiny bag of sperm attached for life to a Bone Eating Snot Flower Worm.

Comments

  1. Larry Kearney says

    Saw the B.E.S.F. Worms at the Fillmore in ’70 on the card with The Dead. I never did understand why they didn’t make it big.

  2. monad says

    I feel sure it should be a snot-flower bone-eater. Species names modify genus names, not the other way around.

  3. shouldbeworking says

    As much as I love teaching physics, I will admit you biology types get the coolest names for things in your field. What chance does ‘Higgs boson’ have against ‘Bone Eating Snot Flower Worm’?

  4. moarscienceplz says

    it’s also one of those species where the large adult forms are all females, and the males have been reduced to a tiny bag of sperm attached for life to a Bone Eating Snot Flower Worm.

    Moggie beat me to it!
    As every MRA knows, this is the ultimate goal of Feminism, and why they must fight so viciously to stop it.
    /snark

  5. JohnnieCanuck says

    Osedax mucofloris, eater of whale bones. Yummy. I’m trying to get my head around how many of the juvenile forms must be floating around in the deep, just so some can chance across a whale carcass and settle in. The low metabolism at temperatures of 4º C must help.