Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstye, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff Lauren Vogel bomb here. It's a skinny creature,
Speaker 1: not much wider than a number two pencil. Yet it's
Speaker 1: one of the longest animals alive today, sometimes rivaling or
Speaker 1: perhaps surpassing the mighty blue whale in length, which can
Speaker 1: grow to a little more than a hundred feet or
Speaker 1: thirty meters long. It has no heart, no spine, no
Speaker 1: body segments. It lurks in mud, sand, and rocky crevices
Speaker 1: around the North Atlantic. It's mucus is surprisingly toxic, and
Speaker 1: when hunger strikes, it summons a winding branch like appendage
Speaker 1: that gets turned inside out. Its name is Linneus longissimus,
Speaker 1: or the boot lace worm, and someday this marine oddity
Speaker 1: might be enlisted to help farmers protect their crops. But
Speaker 1: let's back up a little. In order to make any
Speaker 1: sense of the bootlace worm, you have to take a
Speaker 1: look at its odd branch on the Great Tree of life.
Speaker 1: The boot lace worm is the largest member of the
Speaker 1: animal phylum Nemerdia, also known as ribbon worms or probiscus worms.
Speaker 1: This group includes about one thousand, two hundred documented species.
Speaker 1: Unlike the more familiar earthworms, which areate our soil and
Speaker 1: keep bait shops in business, bootlace worms do not have
Speaker 1: segmented bodies. The blood of a ribbon worm is held
Speaker 1: in a series of vessels. When the walls of these constrict,
Speaker 1: the blood inside is pushed in one direction or another,
Speaker 1: allowing it to circulate throughout the body. The normal muscle
Speaker 1: contractions associated with swimming and crawling help this process. No
Speaker 1: heart is required to keep the blood flowing. One defining
Speaker 1: trait of the Nomerdia phylum is a tubular feeding structure
Speaker 1: called the probiscus. Usually it's tucked away in a specialized pouch. However,
Speaker 1: when the need arises, a ribbon worm applies pressure to
Speaker 1: the area. The force drives the probiscus tube outside of
Speaker 1: the body by quite literally flipping it inside out. All
Speaker 1: of this can happen in a matter of seconds. Okay,
Speaker 1: but why? Ribbon worms eat a variety of things. Some
Speaker 1: are herbivores, but many eat things like crabs, snails, and
Speaker 1: animal carcasses. Having a quick drop robiscus really helps these
Speaker 1: legless animals catch and manipulate food. Sometimes the probiscus is
Speaker 1: also used as a digging tool, and it can definitely
Speaker 1: freak out predators who try to eat the worms. You
Speaker 1: can't blame other creatures for feeling confused or even a
Speaker 1: bit intimidated by the display. Certain ribbon worms can double
Speaker 1: their body length just by whipping out their probiscus. Like most,
Speaker 1: though not all, ribbon worms, the bootley sworm occurs in
Speaker 1: marine habitats. They're indigenous to the northeastern Atlantic Ocean and
Speaker 1: live around the coastlines of Iceland, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Ireland,
Speaker 1: Great Britain, and the Baltic Sea. The worms like to
Speaker 1: bundle themselves up underneath large bowlders by the shore. Other
Speaker 1: hangout spots include rock fissures, beds of kelp, and natural
Speaker 1: seaside pools. You also might see them slithering around on
Speaker 1: muddy beach sand further offshore. Bootleace worms frequent sunlit parts
Speaker 1: of the ocean floor, winding their sinuous bodies through beds
Speaker 1: of muck and seashells. Divers sometimes find them adrift in
Speaker 1: the water as well. Bootlea sworms come in shades of
Speaker 1: black and dark brown. Their skin might appear iridescent or striped,
Speaker 1: at least to our fancy human eyes. A ribbon worms
Speaker 1: can't see images like we can. Instead, they detect changes
Speaker 1: in light conditions through primitive sensory eye spots. Though the
Speaker 1: bootley sworm is only a quarter to half an inch wide,
Speaker 1: that's about five to ten millimeters, it's one of the
Speaker 1: longest known animals on the planet, full stop. They're usually
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of sixteen to thirty two feet long.
Speaker 1: That's five to ten meters. Pretty respectable for a worm,
Speaker 1: but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Specimens measuring
Speaker 1: up to thirty meters long nearly a hundred feet have
Speaker 1: been sighted. If the image of a wriggling worm longer
Speaker 1: than a New York City bus disturbs you, maybe skip ahead.
Speaker 1: Things are about to get even more mind blowing. The
Speaker 1: carcass of a monstrous bootlace worm reportedly washed ashore in
Speaker 1: Scotland during the year eighteen sixty four from end to end.
Speaker 1: It was said to measure for wait for it, more
Speaker 1: than a hundred and eighty feet or fifty five meters long. However,
Speaker 1: claims like this should be taken with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1: The scientific community doesn't have any preserved specimens of a
Speaker 1: bootlace worm measuring anywhere near that size. Also, because ribbon
Speaker 1: worms in general are stretchable, elastic critters with bodies prone
Speaker 1: to distortion, it can be hard to pin down their
Speaker 1: maximum lengths. Anyway, if handling bootlace worms doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: a pleasant experience, you're absolutely right toward off predators and
Speaker 1: grabby people. The invertebrates release huge amounts of thick, foul
Speaker 1: smelling mucus when they feel threatened, and there's more of
Speaker 1: the substance than meets the eye or knows. Naturalists have
Speaker 1: learned that the bootlace worms defensive mucus is loaded with
Speaker 1: peptide toxins. Indeed, when a team examined the stuff in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, they discovered an entirely new group of said toxins,
Speaker 1: hitherto unknown to science. The researchers noted that the most
Speaker 1: common of these peptides probably isn't poisonous to human beings
Speaker 1: or other mammals, but crustaceans and cockroaches might want to
Speaker 1: keep their distance. It's been shown to interfere with nerve
Speaker 1: and muscle function in some crabs and roaches to the
Speaker 1: point that it can leave the critters dead or permanently paralyzed,
Speaker 1: so who knows. In the near future, products derived from
Speaker 1: the bootlace worms stinky mucus may keep pest insects from
Speaker 1: ruining farms and cash crops. The Stranger Things Have Happened
Speaker 1: m Today's episode is based on the article bootleace worms
Speaker 1: can grow longer than most whales on house toffworks dot Com.
Speaker 1: Written by Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and partnership with house toffworks dot Com, and
Speaker 1: it is produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio. Visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.