These Oddly Named Worms May Have Been the First Hermits
The New York Times
So-called “penis worms” get attention for all the wrong reasons. But new research finds they may have been early pioneers in a creative survival technique.
Consider this evolutionary dilemma, faced by the aquatic and squishy: How do you survive in hostile, predator-filled oceans?
Squid rely on speed or camouflage. Snails develop complex shells. Hermit crabs borrow those complex shells when other animals aren’t using them, trading them out for bigger models as they grow.
This sheltering strategy was believed to have emerged 180 million years ago in the Jurassic Period, when hermit crabs’ ancestors appeared in oceans, said Martin Smith, a paleontologist at the University of Durham in England. But in a study published Monday in Current Biology, Dr. Smith and colleagues suggest that the practice of hiding out in borrowed shells actually dates back hundreds of millions of years earlier, to the dawn of complex ecosystems.
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