A video circulating this week shows a worm which is apparently trying to eat a person’s hand by spitting out a tentacled structure.

Ribbon Worm

The video shows a worm crawling on a person’s hand, when a tentacled structure is suddenly spit out of the worm’s mouth. The video appeared this week on YouTube, along with a lively discussion which followed on Reddit, where it was described as the “strangest worm ever.”

According to Science Alert, the worm in the video is a type of ribbon worm, or Nemertea. The exact species has been debated among some writers, although several readers believe it is an example of the Nemertean Gorgonorhynchus. The object spit out of the worm’s mouth is called a proboscis, which is described by Smithsonian.com in the following manner:

A defining characteristic of ribbon worms is the presence of a proboscis—a unique muscular structure inside the worm’s body. When attacking prey, they compress their bodies to push out the proboscis like the finger of a latex glove turned inside-out.

Ribbon worms can range from 5 millimeters to a behemoth specimen measuring over 55 meters which washed ashore in Scotland in 1864.

You can see a similar worm in the video below.

Bottom Line

The video circulating this week of a worm which spits out a tentacled object is real. It is an example of a ribbon worm.