Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Living giant shipworm found for the first time in Philippines

Scientists have found live specimens of the rare giant shipworm for the first time, in the Philippines.

Details of the creature, which can reach up to 1.55m (5ft) in length and 6cm (2.3in) in diameter, were published in a US science journal.

The giant shipworm spends its life encased in a hard shell, submerged head-down in mud.

Though its existence has been known for years, no living specimen had been studied until now.

Despite its name, the giant shipworm is actually a bivalve - the same group as clams and mussels.

The "rare and enigmatic species", also known as Kuphus polythamia, is the longest living bivalve known to man, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

The strange shells have been found for centuries, because they are "very sturdy and they last a long time", said Daniel Distel, the report's chief author. "But we've never known where to find them."

The discovery came about by chance, when Dr Distel's team was working in the Philippines with local scientists.

"One of our students came in and said, 'Hey, look at this' - he'd found this really great video on YouTube," Dr Distel said.

"We searched the literature and the scientific sources for years, and then we find it on YouTube. It's the miracle of social media."

That news report by Philippines channel GMA Network led a team of scientists from the US, the Philippines and France to find and collect five giant shipworms in Mindanao in a marine bay.

For Dr Distel, who works at Ocean Genome Legacy - a research group and "gene bank", storing the genetic material of rare ocean creatures - it was a major find.

But the scientists are keeping the exact location secret.

Image copyright PNAS.ORG Image caption The giant shipworm feeds from a valve (marked V) and has two siphons at its tail (marked S) to take in and expel water

The giant shipworms were once found all over the globe, but the team does not know how many are left. On top of that, the outside tubes "fetch a pretty good price" among shell collectors, so the researchers are being careful.

A video shows the scientists cutting off one end of a shipworm's shell, before gently shaking it out. A long, slimy black creature is seen sliding out of the tube-like shell.

"It was like opening a soft-boiled egg - I just tapped on it very, very lightly with a chisel, made a circle, and the shell came off, just like an egg," Dr Distel said.

"It feels a lot like it looks - it's kind of slimy, but it wasn't objectionable, it didn't smell bad."

The team was, however, surprised by its jet-black colour - most bivalves are light cream colours. It is also extremely muscular - or "beefy" - despite the fact that it lives its life in a shell.

Previously, the best information they had was based off drawings of a poorly-preserved dead specimen from the 1960s.

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The creature belongs to the shipworm family, whose members are usually much smaller. They burrow into and feed on rotting wood.

The giant shipworm is unique not just for its size, but also for feeding on nutrients in mud and marine sediment instead, using a type of bacteria.

It therefore has a much smaller digestive system compared to other shipworms.

And while the discovery of the animal itself is exciting, the team's research has revealed there is an entire hidden ecosystem at play.

The giant shipworm has bacteria that live inside its shell, converting chemicals from the nearby rotting wood into energy and nutrients, similar to what plants do with sunlight.

That, Dr Distel said, will be a big part of their future research on these rare specimens.</s>MANILA-Scientists have found live specimens of the rare giant shipworm for the first time, in the Philippines.

Details of the creature, which can reach up to 1.55m (5ft) in length and 6cm (2.3in) in diameter, were published in a US science journal.

The giant shipworm spends its life encased in a hard shell, submerged head-down in mud, which it feeds on.

Though its existence has been known for years, no living specimen had been studied until now.

Despite its name it is actually a bivalve, which is the same group as clams and mussels.

The “rare and enigmatic species”, also known as Kuphus polythamia, is the longest living bivalve known to man, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

The team of scientists from the US, the Philippines and France recently found and collected five giant shipworms in Mindanao in a marine bay.

A video shows the scientists carefully cutting off one end of the shipworm’s shell, before gently shaking it out. A long, slimy black creature is seen sliding out of the tube-like shell.

It belongs to the shipworm family, whose members are usually much smaller and burrow and feed on rotting wood.

The giant shipworm is unique not just for its size, but also for feeding on mud and marine sediment instead, using a type of bacteria.

It therefore has a much smaller digestive system compared to other shipworms.

The animal creates its own hard tube shell, made of calcium carbonate.

It also makes a hard cap to cover its head, which is re-absorbed by the giant shipworm when it wants to grow and burrow further into the mud, researchers said.</s>Rare giant shipworm have been found alive in the Philippines for the first time.

Scientists revealed the discovery of the creature, which measure up to 5ft in length and 6cm in diameter, in an American journal.

The shipworm spends its life encased in a hard shell and is classed as a bivalve – the same group as clams and mussels.

The creature is the world’s longest living bivalve, according to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Footage shows scientists shake the shipworm from its casing before a long, slimy, black creature is seen sliding out.

It is one of five of the “rare and enigmatic” species collected from a bay in Mindanao, the BBC reported.

The giant shipworm is particularly rare as it feeds on mud rather than bacteria, unlike other similar species.</s>Scientists in the Philippines have discovered the first living giant shipworm.

The creature’s existence has been established for years, but no live specimen had previously been found.

The animal can reach a length of up to 1.55m (5ft) and a diameter of 6cm (2.3in).

The living specimen’s discovery was detailed in US science journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

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The shipworm is part of the bivalve family, in the same group as mussels and clams, and spends its life encased in a hard shell, feeding on mud.

The study said this ‘rare and enigmatic species’, known as Kuphus polythamia, is the longest living bivalve known to man.

A team of scientists from the Philippines, France and the US discovered five giant shipworms in a marine bay in Mindanao.

They cut off one end of the shipworm’s shell before shaking out the long, slimy and black animal.

Shipworms are usually must smaller and feed on rotting wood.

The giant shipworm creates its own hard shell from calcium carbonate and even has a protective cap over its head, which it reabsorbs to burrow into the mud for food.</s>Before watching the video above, here’s fair warning: Be prepared to squirm like never before.

Found living beneath the sea in the Philippines is a giant worm-like creature called a shipworm. Scientists who study this creature had never discovered a live specimen before.

The video shows the large, slimy creature sliding out of a long, tube-shaped shell made of calcium carbonate. The shipworm slips onto the table where scientists examine the rare creature.

The creature is actually related to clams and mussels despite being named a shipworm.

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(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS))



Shipworms are usually smaller animals that live on rotting wood, but the giant shipworm can measure up to 5-feet long by 2.5-inches wide and feeds on marine sediment.

According to The Telegraph, the video and the paper accompanying it were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).</s>An international team of scientists is studying live specimens of a giant, black, mud dwelling worm-like animal — a Kuphus polythalamia — that feeds on sulfur and lives in a shell that looks like a baseball bat.

People have known about giant shipworms for centuries but obtaining live ones for study has been elusive. Researchers from the University of Utah, Northeastern University, University of the Philippines, Sultan Kudarat State University and Drexel University finally found the mollusks in a lagoon on an abandoned log farm in the Philippines.

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The researchers hope by studying the microbes found in of the world’s longest bivalve’s single gill they will find new antimicrobial substances.

The findings were published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Unlike its slimy cousins, K.polythalamia doesn’t eat rotting wood. Rather, it burrows into the mud, consuming hydrogen sulfide. Its microbes turn the swamp gas into carbon.

"This particular species fall square in the middle of the family, so we know it had to have a wood-eating ancestor," Margo Haygood, a research professor in medicinal chemistry at the University of Utah College of Pharmacy, told Popular Science.

"Do they start out eating wood? We don't know anything about their life cycle, or where we might find more populations of them. And we have no idea how old they are. ... Are the specimens we studied a couple years old, or a couple hundred?"

The animal’s shells, which look like elephant tusks and can be 5-feet in length, often wash ashore. The giant shipworm itself is “dark gray, shiny and floppy,” Haygood said.

"I was awestruck when I first saw the sheer immensity of this bizarre animal," Marvin Altamia, a researcher at the marine sciences institute, University of the Philippines, told Phys.org.

Daniel Distel of the Ocean Genome Legacy Center at Northeastern University in Boston said he and colleagues were first made aware of the colony in 2010 as the result of a Philippine TV news story on people trying to eat the slimy beasts for medicinal purposes. He told New Scientist he had been “looking for them for 20 years.”

“It’s hard not to be amazed when seeing one in the flesh, even if you know nothing about them,” Distel said. “There is no other animal like them.”

Distel said the giant shipworm evolved from the wood-eating variety and likely is a newer addition to the family tree.
• Can Oxytocin Be Used To Treat PTSD, Alcohol Abuse?</s>MANILA: An enormous black worm that lives in the mud of the sea floor and survives on the remnants of noxious gases digested by bacteria has been unveiled by scientists for the first time.

The slimy giant shipworm can grow up to 155 centimetres (five feet) in length, despite living a sedentary life in ocean sediment and apparently eating nothing more than the waste products of the micro-organisms that live in its gills.

"We are amazed. This is the first time we saw a shipworm as large as this. Usually, shipworms are only as short as a matchstick and are white," Filipino marine biologist Julie Albano told AFP.

The shipworm is a not actually a worm at all, but a bivalve - like mussels and clams - and has its own brittle, tusk-like shell.

Also known by its scientific name Kuphus Polythalamia, the mollusc is radically different from its smaller shipworm cousins, which burrow in - and digest - wood.

Researchers who analysed the creature found that although it had its own digestive system, this was shrunken and appeared to be largely redundant.

Instead, Kuphus Polythalamia relies on bacteria that live in its gills, which digest hydrogen sulphide - a gas that smells of rotten eggs - from the mud and emit traces of carbon.

The process is photosynthesis in plants, where they take carbon dioxide from the air, use the carbon to grow and expel oxygen as a by-product.

"We suspected the giant shipworm was radically different from other wood-eating shipworms. Finding the animal confirmed that," said Margo Haygood, a research professor at the University of Utah who also took part in the study.

The discovery of the giant shipworm, a species never before studied, marked the first time scientists had live specimens in hand, according to an article published this week in American journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This remarkable species remains to be fully described and explained," the journal said.

Albano said the giant shipworm was found in the coastal town of Kalamansig in southern Sultan Kudarat province and its bacteria are now being studied for possible pharmaceutical use.

While the odd-looking animals are new to international marine scientists, Albano said, local people have clearly known all about them for years.

"The shipworm is edible, tastes like an octopus," she said. "Locals eat it and it serves as an aphrodisiac for them."</s>Scientists recently found live specimens of the rare giant shipworm for the first time in the Philippines. The massive creature is said to reach up to 5 feet in length and up to 2.3 inches in diameter, making it a monstrous but fascinating find.

According to BBC News, the giant shipworm spends its entire life encased in a hard shell while submerged head down in the mud that it feeds on. It is not a recent discovery. In fact, the existence of these worms was known for years, but no live specimen has ever been studied until now.

The giant shipworm, despite the connotation of its name, is not actually a worm but a bivalve. This means that it is in the same group as clams and mussels. However, it is said to be the longest living bivalve known to man.

Strange shells belonging to the shipworms have been found for centuries. Daniel Distel, chief author of the team that studied the species, noted that they are sturdy and that they last for long periods. However, scientists never knew where to find them until they came across one by chance while working with Filipino scientists.

The study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, described the live giant shipworm for the first time. They found that its symbiotic relationship with bacteria provided clues regarding its evolution, specifically its strange way of eating. In examining the giant shipworms, Dr. Distel had to crack open its shell to slide it out and do an improvised dissection.

They found that despite the worm's massive size, it has a small digestive system. Its gills were speckled with a yellow substance that is presumed to be sulfur. This suggests that the worms lived off hydrogen sulfide -- a toxic chemical -- not with wood pulp, as is the diet of other shipworm species.

As for now, Dr. Distel's team is still studying the shipworm to try to understand the mysterious species. "Whenever you find something so weird and so unusual, there's often going to be unexpected discoveries that come from it," Distel said.</s>Distel washed the mud caked to the outside of the giant shipworm shell and tapped off the outer cap to reveal the long black creature living inside. 



 Researchers confirmed that, as they had suspected, the giant shipworm was "radically different" from other wood-eating shipworms. Unlike the regular shipworm, which burrows deep into the wood of trees washed into the ocean and digests it, the giant shipworm makes its home in foul-smelling mud.

The truth behind the centuries-old legend of the giant shipworm has finally been confirmed by scientists, who got up close and personal with the elusive, sulfur-feasting creature for the first time.A team of international researchers examined the first living giant shipworm in the Philippines, throwing some light on the mysterious Kuphus polythalamia species - the longest bivalve mollusc in the world, reaching up to 5 feet (1.52 meters) in length.The bizarre-looking animal, encased in a tusk-like shell, may be the stuff of nightmares for many, but its discovery offers scientists a unique opportunity to unravel the secrets of the rare specimen.The shells are fairly common, but we have never had access to the animal living inside," lead investigator and director of the Ocean Genome Legacy Center at Northeastern University, Daniel Distel said "Being present for the first encounter of an animal like this is the closest I will ever get to being a 19th-century naturalist," said Margo Haygood, study author and research professor in medicinal chemistry at the University of Utah College of Pharmacy.The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , came about after the team watched a documentary that aired on Philippines television showing the creatures in their natural habitat - the mud of a shallow lagoon.Taking this as their lead, the researchers launched an expedition which resulted in the incredible find of a live specimen of the Kuphus polythalamia.The mud emits 'rotten egg gas', hydrogen sulfide, which is used by bacteria in the giant shipworm's gills as energy to produce organic carbon for feeding the animal."We are also interested to see if similar transitions can be found for other animals that live in unique habitats around the world," said Distel.</s>The giant shipworm, Kuphus polythalamia, a rare, giant, worm-like clam, is finally discovered in a shallow bay in Mindanao by a team of scientists from the US and the Philippines

MANILA, Philippines – It's a scientific legend that became real, and for the squeamish, the stuff nightmares are made of – the discovery of a giant shipworm the size of a baseball bat.

For years, scientists have been looking for the giant shipworm, Kuphus polythalamia, a rare, giant, worm-like animal, officially classified as a mollusc (relatives of snails and squids). Some have even labeled it the "unicorn of molluscs."

The existence of the animal was first recorded in the 18th century through their long, tusk-like shells 3- to 5-feet long, but it has never been seen alive, according to lead investigator Daniel Distel, a research professor and director of the Ocean Genome Legacy Center at Northeastern University.

Finally, the search for the elusive animal had a major lead when a documentary aired on Philippine TV showed the "bizarre creatures planted, like carrots, in the mud of a shallow lagoon." Finally: live specimens of the giant shipworm.

What they found in a "marine bay formerly used as a log storage pond" in Mindanao: a giant, wriggly, black creature living inside a shell, very different from the shipworms that people usually see burrowing in wood.

Unlike the "regular" shipworms that burrow in wood that have washed into the sea, the researchers found that the Kuphus species thrive in mud rich in organic nutrients and hydrogen sulfide. This hydrogen sulfide is used by bacteria living in the shipworm's gills to produce carbon, which is the primary "food" of the mollusc.

The scientists will continue studying the unique animal, in particular how it adapted to its unique habitat and used the stinky gas to survive.

The researchers involved in the discovery are from the University of Utah, Northeastern University, University of the Philippines, Sultan Kudarat State University, and Drexel University.

The study revealing the findings was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, April 17. – Rappler.com
Scientists announce, through the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, that live specimens of the rare Kuphus polythalamia (giant shipworm) have been discovered for the first time in the Philippines.