Two Worms a' Weirding

Image: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2015 Hohonu Moana

Avert your eyes! This worm is completely NAKED!

It's a Scale Worm... but he has no scales! In their place is what looks like a smooth, gelatinous blimp of translucent flab tip-toeing on feet made of bristles. It's disgusting. It's beautiful. It's precisely the kind of thing we expect from the deep sea.

Image: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2015 Hohonu Moana

On the other hand, here's another polychaete worm with a more stylish sense of the peculiar.

It looks to me like she might be related to the Green Bomber and the Squidworm, and she's splendidly attired in luxurious, feathery bristles. I'm sure she uses them to swim through the gloomy water in a manner that looks both disgusting and beautiful. Because when you live in the deep sea, that's what you do.