Weirdo Deep-Sea Anemone Kills a Giant Worm, Goes for a Walk

If you already think everything at the bottom of the ocean is slightly terrifying, Iosactis vagabunda won't change your mind. It's transparent, can tunnel underground, and hunts animals 15 times its size. And scientists are now realizing that there might be way, way more of these roaming killers than they'd previously thought. Iosactis vagabunda lives on the Porcupine Abyssal Plain, a seabed southwest of Ireland that ranges from 4,000 to nearly 5,000 meters deep. The species was already thought to be common in this area. But ocean-floor trawls don't drag up many of the animals, thanks to their small, squishy bodies and tendency to burrow. To learn what the transparent creatures are really doing down there, National Oceanography Centre graduate student Jennifer Durden and her coauthors used tens of thousands of photographs. They gathered images from a station at the Porcupine Abyssal Plain, a camera towed by a research ship, ...