‘Fantastic’ spiral found on seafloor rock off Chile has a foul origin, experts say
A team of deep sea explorers with the Schmidt Ocean Institute found a “fantastic” spiral on a square block off the coast of southern Chile, video shows.
It was discovered Nov. 24 at a depth of 1,100 feet deep and could easily be pegged as human in origin.
However, closer inspection revealed the “beautiful” creation was not an artifact linked to Chile’s ancient cultures.
Instead, it was the work of a worm, which was still there, hanging out on the edge of the rock, the video shows.
And that spiral was actually a very long trail of its poop, marine biologists say.
They are known as acorn worms, or “spiral poo worms,” and their claim to fame is pattern pooping, scientists say.
Acorn worms were first documented in 2010 in the North Atlantic, but scientists working with the Schmidt Ocean Institute weren’t sure the species had ever been “formally cited in Chile before,” the institute told McClatchy News.
The spiral appeared as one of the institute’s remotely operated vehicles was exploring a canyon system off the Ladrillero Channel between Angamos Island and Stosch Island.
The team seized the opportunity to “collect” the worm for study in a lab, a process that involved gently sucking it up with the equivalent of a vacuum cleaner hose. Video shows the worm dragged several inches of fresh poop into the tube with it.
Acorn worms “are deposit feeders, consuming sediment and digesting organic matter from it,’ NOAA Ocean Exploration reports.
Their spirals poops were long a mystery for scientists, because “there were no ‘footprints’ between the spirals,” Phys.org reported in 2011 article.
“For hundreds of years we have seen spiral poo trails in fossils but no-one knew what they were from,” professor Monty Priede of the University of Aberdeen’s Oceanlab told Phys.org.
This story was originally published November 27, 2024 at 7:43 AM with the headline "‘Fantastic’ spiral found on seafloor rock off Chile has a foul origin, experts say."