Bobbit Worm
Weirdness 9/10

The ten-foot worm that snaps fish in half from under the sand

This ten-foot worm buries itself and snaps prey in half in a fraction of a second.

📋 Fact File
🐾 Worm🍽️ Carnivore (ambushes fish)
📏 Size
Often about 1 m (3 ft) long; the record is 299 cm (nearly 10 ft)
About as long as a baseball bat — the giants are longer than your bed
Lifespan
Unknown — no one has managed to measure it yet
Not EvaluatedSo little is known about this secretive worm that the Red List has never assessed it.
🤔 Guess first

Which one is REALLY true about the Bobbit Worm?

The short version

The bobbit worm is a giant marine bristle worm up to ten feet long that buries almost its whole body in the seabed, leaving only its antennae-tipped head and scissor-like jaws exposed. When a fish brushes past, it strikes so fast and hard it can slice prey clean in half before dragging it under the sand.

Why it's so weird

  • The Bobbit Worm can grow up to around ten feet long while keeping almost all of that body buried in a burrow.
  • The Bobbit Worm leaves only its head above the sand, tipped with five antennae and a set of scissor-like jaws.
  • The Bobbit Worm strikes so fast and so hard when a fish brushes past that it can slice the clean in half.
  • The Bobbit Worm drags whatever it catches down under the sand before eating it.
  • The Bobbit Worm is a giant marine bristle worm with an iridescent body that flashes rainbow colors in the light.
📏 How big is it, really?
Bobbit Worm
1.0 m
Bobbit Worm
a 7-year-old
1.2 m
🧒

You could line up about 1 of them along a 7-year-old!