"Luminous bristles"

Deep-sea worm looks like a pair of false eyelashes

(Bild: Schmidt Ocean Institute)

With the help of a diving robot, researchers off the coast of Chile have succeeded in taking pictures (see video) of an obscure-looking deep-sea creature. At first glance, the creature could easily be mistaken for a glittering pair of false eyelashes ...

A team from the Schmidt Ocean Institute filmed the bristle worm on the edge of a coastal deep-sea area that extends from the west coast of Chile and drops steeply into the Pacific Ocean. They recently published images of the animal on Facebook and Instagram (post below).

"Deep-sea Christmas tree", "toilet scrubber"
The images of the creature were met with great interest from users. One user described the worm as a "forbidden toilet scrubber", another called it a "deep-sea Christmas tree". A third joked: "Looks like two false eyelashes put together".

At first glance, the creature could easily be mistaken for a glittering pair of false eyelashes.(Bild: Schmidt Ocean Institute)

The deep-sea worm has protein structures in its bristles that make them iridescent.(Bild: Schmidt Ocean Institute)

The animal is a polychaete, a class of annelid worms that, with a few exceptions, lives in the sea and colonizes all habitats here. A good 10,000 species of these worms are known to date.

Protein structures make bristles glow
The filmed specimen is bioluminescent (in biology, bioluminescence is the ability of living organisms to produce light themselves or with the help of symbionts). It has protein structures in its bristles that make them shimmer, according to experts.