This Is a Giant Shipworm. You May Wish It Had Stayed In Its Tube.
Bassel Nasr
Scientists have finally studied a living giant shipworm, and it is stranger than expected.
For centuries scientists knew the giant shipworm only from its empty, tusk-like shells. Now they have studied a living one.
The creature, a type of clam, lives head-down in mud inside a hard tube and can grow more than a metre long. Instead of eating wood like its relatives, it relies on bacteria in its gills that turn sulphur gases into food.
The discovery shows how much is still unknown about life on our own planet, and how microbes can power whole ecosystems.