Researchers find penis-esque sea creature in ocean off Australia

BEFORE you drift off and imagine the worst, we ask you remove your mind from the gutter because this phallic looking object is not as it appears.

Museums Victoria team aboard The Investigator show off new deep sea creatures found. Picture: Rob Zugaro/CSIRO/Museums Victoria

THE land down under is home to many wonderful creatures, such as the dingo, kangaroo, koala and the floating penis ... Wait. What?

OK, it might not technically be called the floating penis, but a team of deep sea researchers working off the coast of Australia have discovered a phallic looking ‘peanut worm’.

According to researchers, the peanut worm is not to be confused with the penis worm despite its appearance.

“When threatened they can contract their long head inward and more resemble a peanut,” the team explained.

The penis, sorry, peanut worm, can also reproduce both sexually and asexually — although we already could have guessed that one.

The doodle-esque deep discovery was made by a team of 58 scientists from Australia and around the world, during a month-long exploration on a vessel aptly named the Investigator.

Chief scientist and senior curator of the Marine Invertebrates from Museums Victoria Dr Tim O’Hara said the expedition aimed to locate Australian sea-creatures never before seen by the scientific world.

“Australia’s deep-sea environment is larger in size than the mainland, and until now, almost nothing was known about life on the abyssal plain,” he told Nat Geo.
“We’re really excited about the discoveries that we’ve made and are thrilled that we can now share them with the Australian and international public.”

Thankfully, a penis-shaped creature wasn’t the only discovery, with researchers finding a number of different animals including giant sea spiders, a blob fish and carnivorous sponges.

Zombie worms are commonly found in the decaying remains of whales on the ocean floor, burrowing into their bones to reach the sustenance within. With no functioning mouths, guts or anuses, they have bacteria that digest these grisly remains for them. Picture: Rob Zugaro/CSIRO/Museums Victoria

This is a nasty little bioluminescent shark with its neatly arranged serrated teeth inhabits the oceanic ‘twilight zone’ in depths to 1000m. It preys on big fishes, whales, dolphins and the occasional unfortunate swimmer, latching onto them before gouging out cookie-sized chunks of flesh. Picture: Rob Zugaro/CSIRO/Museums Victoria

This bright red spiny crab sports an armour of spikes tailored to protect it from the dangers of the deep. These are not actually true crabs but related more to hermit crabs, although this hermit has traded in its shell for gnarly spikes. Picture: Rob Zugaro/CSIRO/Museums Victoria

With no eyes and a Mona Lisa smile, the ‘faceless’ fish had the crew completely baffled when it was brought up from 4km below the surface. Picture: Museums Victoria / CSIRO

These octopus flap their earlike fins to fly, just like the Disney character of the same name, except this animal flaps its ears to glide gracefully through the deep dark abyss. Picture: Rob Zugaro/CSIRO/Museums Victoria

This mysterious little deep sea coffinfish with its bluish eyes and red feet belongs to the anglerfish group. It attracts unsuspecting prey using a fishing rod tipped with a fluffy bait on top of its head. When threatened coffinfishes often inflate themselves with water to make themselves look more menacing. Picture: Rob Zugaro/CSIRO/Museums Victoria

These iconic abyssal fishes, often called spiderfishes, prop high off the sea floor on their stilt-like fins. Like all fishes in the spiderfish family, they have very reduced eyes. To feed, they face into the current, extending their elongated pectoral fins forward ‘feeling’ their prey items drifting by. Picture: Rob Zugaro/CSIRO/Museums Victoria

A herd of sea pigs in the Freycinet Marine Reserve off Tasmania. These cute little pink pigs are the ocean’s vacuum cleaners, using their tube like feet to move across the abyssal mud, hoovering up microorganisms. They are the only type of sea cucumber with ‘feet’ and can gather in great numbers where food is abundant in the abyssal realm. Picture: Rob Zugaro/CSIRO/Museums Victoria

Crustaceans such as this amphipod are deep sea scavengers and will eat almost anything nutritious they come across, including the decaying remains of a dead whale, drifted down from the world above. Picture: Rob Zugaro/CSIRO/Museums Victoria

Glass Sponge These incredible glass sponges have a skeleton made of a lattice of silica filaments, some of which can be up to a metre long! They feed by sifting bacteria and other single celled organisms from the water gently passing over their delicate glass housing. Picture: Rob Zugaro/CSIRO/Museums Victoria