Spiral shit animals (Torquarator bullocki)
These strange creatures were first spotted crawling
on the sea floor in the 1960s. They feed on sediment
and often leave spiral trails behind them, hence the
name. Although they look like worms they actually
belong to a group called the hemichordates, which
have primitive spinal cords. Little was known about
them until 2002, when the first one was collected
two kilometres down on the Pacific sea floor. It turned
out to be so different to known hemichordates that
an entirely new family was created to accommodate
it. Others, including the one pictured above, have yet
to be collected and named.
