Osedax

Osedax roseus

• Osedax frankpressi
• Osedax japonicus
• Osedax mucofloris
• Osedax roseus
• Osedax rubiplumus
• Osedax mcleanicus

Osedax (Latin for " bone -eating " ) is a genus of polychaete worms of the family of Bart ( Siboglinidae ), which feed on the bones of dead whales. They were discovered for the first time in February 2002 in Monterey Bay in California. You do not have eyes, legs, stomachs nor mouths and digest Walfette and oils with the help of symbiotic bacteria Oceanospirillales. Breathing is via colorful spring-like gills and they take over their food on foot. Between 50 and 100 microscopic small males live in the gelatinous tube of the females. You never evolve via the larval stage also, but have a large number of sperm.

The worms of Osedax species and Osedax frankpressi rubiplumus were discovered on the carcass of a gray whale in the Monterey Canyon at a depth of 2,800 meters by the mini- submarine ROV Tiburon. In 2005, an experiment of Swedish marine biologists to explore the third known type Osedax mucofloris (literally " flower slime " ) in the North Sea on the west coast of Sweden. In the experiment, the carcass of a minke whale washed up on land was taken to a depth of 120 meters and observed over several months. The biologists were surprised to find that unlike the other two species Osedax mucofloris lives in much shallower waters.

Craig Smith, a Hawaiian researchers believed that about half of all Osedax species is extinct, when the whale population declined in the late 19th century by the whaling by 90%.