Video: Bizarre Sea Creature Caught by Taiwanese Fisherman

   06.09.15

Video: Bizarre Sea Creature Caught by Taiwanese Fisherman

We’ll give you three guesses to determine what this creature is, and you can’t say it’s an alien.

Fisherman Wei Cheng Jian found this worm-like critter last week while fishing near a port in Penghu. When he uploaded the video to Facebook, it quickly went viral, amassing a million views in less than a week and garnering loads of surprised—and disgusted—comments. According to National Geographic, this creature is actually a species of predatory ribbon worm. That long pink appendage you see darting out of its “mouth” is actually how it ensnares prey and draw them in to a slow, but inevitable death.

John McDermott, a zoologist at Franklin and Marshall College, said that ribbon worms can eat prey much bigger than they are—and they’re stronger than they look.

“These worms are even better than pythons in this regard,” he said.

In this case, it is likely that the worm just came up along with whatever else the fisherman had pulled in and eventually slithered into sight.

You can watch the worm ooze around below.

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