Beard Worms

Beard worms live in the deep sea, often in thermal vents in the sea floor. Unlike most animals, they gain their energy from bacteria. These bacteria break down chemicals from the sea to release energy.

Daylight never spans the profound sea depths, so creatures living there cannot get life from the Sun. Beard worms have solved this problem by using a chemical called hydrogen sulfide that spews into the water from underwater volcanoes. This substance is noxious to a considerable number of creatures, but facial hair worms can eat it resulting from the fact that their forms hold extraordinary microorganisms that transform the hydrogen sulfide into nourishment for their

bodies.

Unusual Bodies

Beard worms were once placed in a small group by themselves, the phylum Pogonophora. On the grounds that they are basically little, delicate, and exist in truly profound water they are troublesome to recognize. Entire beasts, as opposed to broken parts, have just been found very newly.Their bodies are encased in long, thin tubes, made from proteins like those in the outer covering of insects.

The front end of the animal itself has a “beard” made up of a number of tentacles (between 1 and 1,000) that stick out from the tube. The bottom of the tube lies buried in the seabed. Two more sections make up the body: a long, unsegmented trunk region and a shorter tail section. The tail section is very fragile and was missing from early specimens because it had broken off. Recent research has shown that the tail is made up of segments. So beard worms are really members of the large and widespread phylum Annelida—the same phylum that contains the earthworms.