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| Image: mentalblock_DMD Red-tipped Fireworm, Chloeia viridis |
We've seen the Bearded Fireworm before but I thought it would be cool to see what some of their relatives get up to. Especially since it seems like the thing that guy fished up last time was in fact a Fireworm of the genus Chloeia.
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| Image: wildsingapore |
Fireworms are just like that. They're BRISTLING with painful, stinging... bristles. They're sharp and keen to embed themselves in skin. where they easily break off and stay there like a splinter, only more poisonous. Think of it more as a a conga line of aquatic wasps walking around being pretty.
Video: shachimaru1
And they really do walk. These are polychaetes, the ones with the fleshy bits on their sides that pretend to be legs. These have yet more bristles attached so the Fireworm can crawl around the place, looking like some weird half stinging caterpillar, half stinging centipede, half nest-of-stinging-wasps thing. That's THREE halves. All of which sting. So wear gloves. Or those massive foam hands. Or a collection of tiny ones.
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| Image: mentalblock_DMD Diving into a burrow |
Video: ebikaniaquarium
It's not necessarily the strange, gaping mouth which seems to pop out from nowhere...
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| Image: mentalblock_DMD |
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| Image: mentalblock_DMD |
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| Image: mentalblock_DMD |
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| Image: mentalblock_DMD |
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| Image: mentalblock_DMD |
Isn't it always the way? You find someone beautiful to add a bit of colour to your life and then they sting you and munch on a fish-head. *sigh*.
6 comments:
laughing at you all the way through. with you?
yup, gotta avoid the pretty ones. they'll hurt you for sure.
Ooooh, with me, at me, I don't mind!
I saw one of these in the Gulf of California, when I was there for a biology field trip. I had actually tried to pick it up, and then saw all the spines in my fingers. A kid nearby told me it was a fireworm and I was about to start hurting. I rubbed my hand in the sand, and never felt a thing, and consider myself very lucky about that. Very cool video, looks like a hairy vacuum cleaner extension tube, sucking up those meaty bits.
Hahah! I'm imagining this child staring at you with cold eyes waiting for your pain to begin.
Cool that it didn't hurt! Maybe you have some kind of super power!
I bet they play some mean wind instruments, though, if The Little Mermaid has taught me anything....
Ha! I think you can make wind instruments out of bones!
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