The Creature(s) from the North Carolina Sewer

Every so often, an organism comes along that has even biologists fighting over what it “is”. Now you’d expect that after several thousand years of scientific inquiry, we’d have a pretty good handle on the terrestrial macrobiota of the world. You’d be wrong.

The background here is that a North Carolina construction company was hired by the city of Raleigh to inspect its sewer lines. They used a flexible periscope to snake their way in and capture video. I’m sure they never expected what they were about to find. This one is not for the faint of heart, kids. Brace yourself and hit play.

Speculation on the identity of these masses has ranged from bryozoans to annelid worms and slime molds to space aliens.

One thing I can say for sure is this is NOT a slime mold. No slime mold is capable of moving that quickly. To see slime molds move, you’d have to time lapse the heck out of a video. This is also not what I’d call slime mold habitat. They like water, but not THAT much water. They tend to prefer a nice soil/dead wood wrap, easy on the sunlight.

Several experts queried by both Deep Sea News (where I found this gem) and ABC News (lots of good reporting here) seem to be agreeing that this is, in fact, a colony of Tubifex tubifex, or sludge worms. Here’s DSN:

Enter stage right Dr. Timothy S. Wood who is an expert on freshwater bryozoa and an officer with the International Bryozoology Association.  I sent along the video and this was his reponse…

Thanks for the video – I had not see it before. No, these are not bryozoans!  They are clumps of annelid worms, almost certainly tubificids (Naididae, probably genus Tubifex). Normally these occur in soil and sediment, especially at the bottom and edges of polluted streams. In the photo they have apparently entered a pipeline somehow, and in the absence of soil they are coiling around each other. The contractions you see are the result of a single worm contracting and then stimulating all the others to do the same almost simultaneously, so it looks like a single big muscle contracting. Interesting video.

So, for the record, here are what individual Tubifex worms can look like:

Matthias Tilly/Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Sludge worms are annelid worms, just like tube worms, which means they have . . . wait for it . . . *human-like blood*! Combined with their filamentous form, and synchronous contractions, it really does add up to give these clusters the appearance of a pulsating heart. Or something. If you watch the video carefully (don’t have anything to eat first), you can see the individual worms snaking around in that mass.

According to the all-knowing, all-seeing Wikipedia, T. tubifex lives in lakes and rivers ingesting bacteria and other organic debris. Identifying them is difficult, though, because, inconveniently enough, they dissolve the reproductive organs we use to identify them when they’re finished mating.  “[Barry White music in background] Oh honey . . . come on over here and give me some OH WHY DO I EVEN TRY!?” In addition, their physical appearance changes based on water quality, which might explain their, well, extraterrestrial appearance in the above video.

And perhaps not unexpectedly, fish apparently find these guys delicious. Sludge worms: they’re what for dinner. Now with 95% more meaty slime! Hey, don’t knock ’em. They’ll put scales on your chest.

For one last wormy treat, here is a video of the little guys fully submersed in the lab:

So, I ask you: space aliens or sludge worms? You decide.

Tagged as: Annelids, weird