AUGUST 8,
2019
When marine
biologist Richard Palmer saw a video of sea-dwelling worms snapping at each
other and making one of the loudest sounds ever measured in aquatic animals, he
couldn't believe his ears.
"The
biomechanics allowing the animals to do
this are both puzzling and extraordinary," said Palmer, a professor
emeritus at the University of Alberta. "When I first saw their video
and audio
recordings,
my eyes just popped out of my head because it was so unexpected."
The video
had been sent to him by Ryutaro Goto, a Japanese scientist who asked him to
help figure out how these invertebrates were capable of producing such loud
sounds.
The worms were first discovered in the finger-like protuberances of
glass sea sponges collected off the coast of Japan during a 2017 dredging
expedition.
Isao
Hirabayashi had been the first to hear the sound when a shipment of the newly
discovered species was brought to the Kushimoto Marine Park, where he was the
curator. Together with Goto, a marine biology professor from the University of
Kyoto, they recorded the mysterious sounds and found they were made by the
worms.
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