
The Natural History Museum/Alamy Stock Photo
Osedax worms will eventually cover a whale’s entire carcass as they burrow into its bones to suck out the fat and oil inside.
Deep in the ocean, death is a delicacy. The creatures that live on the cold, lightless seafloor feed on debris and dead animals that drift down from above. Usually, the food options are tiny: plankton, shells, and poop. But when a whale carcass falls to the ocean floor, it’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet. This is called a whale fall. Scavengers like fish and sharks arrive first on the scene to scarf down the whale’s meat. When just bone and fat are left, the whale fall transforms into a fuzzy red blob. That’s because zombie worms cling to the skeleton to eat the bones!
Discovered in 2002, zombie worms, also called Osedax worms, are a unique type of decomposer. Decomposers eat the remains of other organisms and help keep carcasses from piling up like a scene from a bad horror movie. They also keep our ecosystem healthy and balanced. “Decomposition helps with recycling life,” says Jeffrey Blanchard, a microbiologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “We often think of recycling like a recycling bin where we recycle bottles. Decomposers are recyclers of the natural world.”