Worm

New Book Claims RFK Jr. Admitted to Doing Psychedelic Drug DMT, Said Brain Worm Wasn’t Actually a Worm

Kennedy hasn't publicly commented on the claims.

Politics Lucas Ropek Nov 19

Good News Everyone: We Found a New Species of Roundworm That Can Infect Our Brains

In a report this week, doctors have documented the first case of a human brain infection caused by a roundworm normally found in Australian snakes.

Health Ed Cara Aug 29

These AI-Generated Images of Climate Change Make Me Uncomfortable

Scientists say we may have just 10 years left to avert worldwide glaning.

Climate Change Molly Taft Feb 24

Image: Ponz-Segrelles G, Glasby CJ, Helm C, et al. Integrative anatomical study of the branched annelid Ramisyllis multicaudata (Annelida, Syllidae). Journal of Morphology. 2021;1-17.

This Worm Has 100 Butts

In Greek mythology, the hydra is a creature with many heads. In Norse mythology, Odin rides Sleipnir—a horse with many legs. And in the warm, coastal waters of Australia lives Ramisyllis multicaudata, the worm with many butts. The creature is shaped somewhat like a tree, with a single head and a body that branches over…

Biology Jake Buehler May 6

This Is An Animal, Not a Penis

This is a peanut worm. It is an animal. Not a penis. But it looks like a penis. A team of Australian researchers have been sharing photos from their month-long expedition with the RV Investigator, a research vessel currently exploring the oceans off of Australia’s coast. We covered their last phallic discovery, a seemingly faceless…

Tech News Ryan F. Mandelbaum Jun 19

Guy Had No Idea This Enormous Bristle Worm Was Living in His Fish Tank

How could anyone go two years without noticing something this huge? Well, humans have been around for 200,000. Bristle worms and their polychaete brothers have survived five mass extinctions. Many aquarists fill their tanks with live rock, i.e. chunks of coral that still harbor biological and bacterial matter. Bristle worms often piggyback on these corals,…

Sploid Avery Ellis Feb 29

Giving Birth Through Its Anus is the Least Weird Thing About This Ribbon Worm

Look here. An American marine ribbon worm is giving birth. Honestly, it doesn’t look terribly dramatic: there’s a little writhing, and a miniature Prosorhochmus americanus crawls out of its mother’s anus and heads off on its merry way. But for these animals, giving birth through the anus is the least weird part of their reproductive…

Tech News Diane Kelly Oct 30

The Saga of NASA’s Short-Lived “Lost” Logo

NASA’s current logo dates back to 1959. It’s sort of a mess—a wonderful, retro-nostalgic mess—that’s hard to reproduce and doesn’t scale well. In fact, NASA even changed to a different logo that lasted almost 20 years before switching back. What happened? The saga of the “lost” logo illustrates how humans naturally resist change—especially when it…

Space & Spaceflight Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan Aug 17

A Little Vitamin B Is All That Makes This Worm Glow Bright Green

This might look like the result of some wild nuclear accident, but in fact this worm is perfectly healthy. It just happens to glow bright green when exposed to certain wavelengths of light. A team of researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California has discovered that it’s a humble splash of…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe Nov 19

New Money-Destroying Virus Attacks Iran

After the US and Israel cooked up Stuxnet—a potent cyber weapon aimed at Iran’s nuclear facilities—whenever a virus targets Iran, it could be something major. This time around, the web threat wants to erase Iranian banks. The worm, which Symantec has dubbed W32.Narilam, started creeping through Iranian financial servers over the past several days: Just…

Tech News Sam Biddle Nov 26

Behold, the most terrifying worm you’ve ever seen

Those among you with a fear of worms the size of watermelons should avert your eyes now. It’s about to get weird in here. That thing you see floating in a jar, looking positively mammoth beside a cup of coffee? It’s a species of gigantic Antarctic scaleworm known as Eulagisca — or, as I’ve been…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jul 19

Watch a five-inch worm being pulled from a man’s eyeball

When an Indian man asked a doctor to examine his irritated eye, the doctor discovered the man had a little squirming company. A 15-cm parasite was swimming about around the fellow’s eyeball, and the surgery was recorded for Internet posterity. 75-year-old P.K. Krishnamurthy had been suffering from eye pain for two weeks before seeking help…

io9 Lauren Davis Jul 7

Earth’s simplest organisms are part of the food chain after all

Archaea are some of the most abundant and least understood, organisms on the planet. These single-celled creatures weren’t even properly discovered until the 1970s, and big questions about them remain unanswered, such as whether other organisms ever eat them. That might seem like the sort of thing we can take for granted – of course…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Mar 13

These immortal flatworms regenerate like real-life Time Lords

We know there are a few species that don’t die of old age, like the giant tortoise and naked mole rat. But those species aren’t truly immortal — as they still eventually die. These tiny worms might be a different story… one which could have major implications for humans trying to live longer. Negligible senescence…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Feb 28

Meet the tiny “bomber” worm that uses glowing decoys to escape predators

This awesome photo is of a newly discovered deep sea worm, Swima fulgida. Measuring just over an inch long, this little guy lives 9,000 feet underwater and escapes predators by flinging homemade “bombs” at its enemies. This is one of two new species discovered by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. The creature uses…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Feb 6

A Genetic Tweak Could Hulk Out Your Muscles

Some frighteningly muscular mice and nematode worms are running and squirming around a laboratory in Switzerland where scientists have genetically manipulated the critters to be harder, faster and stronger. Personally I like mine to be very scared of me and scurry far, far away. But in a study published in the November 10 issue of…

Tech News Kristen Philipkoski Nov 10

10 Words You Might Think Came from Science (But Are Really From Science Fiction  )

Last week it came to our attention that the phrase “blast off” was coined—not in a purely scientific context, but a science fictional one—by E. E. Smith, an early science fiction author often referred to as “the father of space opera.” The term appeared in Smith’s 1937 story Galactic Patrol, when one character inquires of…

io9 Jeff Prucher -- Oxford University Press Blog Oct 17

This Is the Most Stupid Conversation That Ever Took Place at NASA

Hillary Greenbaum has the story of the two NASA logos: The classic and current Meatball and the discarded Worm. It details the most absurd conversation between NASA Administrator Dr. James Fletcher and Deputy Administrator Dr. George Low: Fletcher: I’m simply not comfortable with those letters, something is missing. Low: Well, yes, the cross stroke is…

Tech News Jesus Diaz Aug 3

This Terrifying Monster Is a Real Animal

Let’s hope that no mad scientists discover an augmentation ray, because I would not like this hydrothermal worm to be the size of a whale. Heck, I don’t even want it to be the size of a striped bass. The image was taken by a Quanta Scanning Electron Microscope, which can magnify things up to…

Tech News Jesus Diaz Jul 18

Worms from Hell Might Mean Worms from Mars

You know how sometimes a piece of awesome news turns sour because it opens the door for something terrible? That’s what’s happening in South Africa, where the discovery of “worms from Hell” means subterranean life on Mars is a lot more likely. Thing is, that “life” would probably be worms from Hell from Mars. The…

Tech News Kyle Wagner Jun 1

Worm

New Book Claims RFK Jr. Admitted to Doing Psychedelic Drug DMT, Said Brain Worm Wasn’t Actually a Worm

Good News Everyone: We Found a New Species of Roundworm That Can Infect Our Brains