Now that's a bug!

It seems a wriggly beastie came up from the deep aboard an unmanned oil exploration submarine in the Gulf of Mexico. The Daily Mail reports:

This deep sea creepy-crawly gave oil workers a fright, after the unexpected visitor hitched a ride on a submarine sent from a rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

The beast normally lives 8,500ft under water and this specimen is thought to be the largest giant isopod ever found at this depth.




‘I've seen the pictures, and they are real, and they really do get that big,’ said Craig McClain, assistant director of science for the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in North Carolina. 'It's definitely not an April Fool's joke.

'It's an isopod,' McClain explained. 'It's like the rolypolys or pillbugs that you find in your garden. It's the same group of animals.

'They're really common in the deep water in the Gulf of Mexico,' he added.

Called the Bathynomus Giganteus, it is a super-sized cousin of the humble woodlouse.

The one in this picture purports to be 2.5ft long - an astonishing figure considering the average specimen if half that length.

Its legs are arranged in seven pairs, and its front two are able to manipulate and bring food to its four sets of jaws. It is a scavenger that feeds on dead whales, fish and shrimp.

There's more at the link, including more photographs. Here's a video clip from the BBC showing isopods (among other ocean scavengers) feeding on a dead fish on the sea floor.

A bit creepy, isn't it? Remind me not to drown where those things hang out . . .

Peter