Thread: Unknown Lifeform in North Carolina Sewer!

YouTube - Unknown Lifeform in North Carolina Sewer!

This really creeped me out at first. Then I found this:

http://deepseanews.com/2009/06/creat...rom-the-sewer/

The latest viral video is from the sewer under Cameron Village in Raleigh, NC. The mysterious creatures found are nothing short of disgusting and spectacular. This video has made its way to Video Sift and various cryptozoology sites. Speculations on the nature of this creature run the from bryozoans, cnidarians, slime molds, and some mysterious alien creature here to suck out our brains. Well let me say first that it is none of the above. I can think of no freshwater Cnidarian that looks anything like this. It lacks the characteristic delineations that would indicate individual zooids in the colony and frankly the retracting of finger-like tentacles doesn’t seem like a bryozan characteristic (see the pictures at this site). In fact, I have poked a lot of invertebrates as lab instructor for invertebrate zoology and graduate student just for shits and giggles and none of the mentioned candidates would respond like this. So back to square one…



You shouldn’t trust me however…you should trust an expert in one of the aforementioned groups. Enter stage right Dr. Timothy S. Wood who is an expert on freshwater bryozoa and an officer with the International Bryozoology Association. I sent along the video and this was his reponse…

Thanks for the video – I had not see it before. No, these are not bryozoans! They are clumps of annelid worms, almost certainly tubificids (Naididae, probably genus Tubifex). Normally these occur in soil and sediment, especially at the bottom and edges of polluted streams. In the photo they have apparently entered a pipeline somehow, and in the absence of soil they are coiling around each other. The contractions you see are the result of a single worm contracting and then stimulating all the others to do the same almost simultaneously, so it looks like a single big muscle contracting. Interesting video.

Still, could you imagine finding something like this on an inspection.

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Ok, I just saw there is a general chit chat area. Should have put it there. Cut me some slack guys.

"could you imagine finding something like this on an inspection."

If that would not make you run for your life, nothing will.
The Blob

Dr. Wood said:

Normally these occur in soil and sediment, especially at the bottom and edges of polluted streams. In the photo they have apparently entered a pipeline somehow, and in the absence of soil they are coiling around each other

Seems to be a crack in the pipe at those locations, so they may actually be "in soil and sediment" and they are located "especially at the bottom and edge of polluted streams", i.e., that sewer pipe.

No, I would not want to see that when scoping out a sewer pipe!

Those worms are common food for tropical fish both salt and freshwater.

I feed live tubifex worms to my freshwater tropical fish. I have a 75 gallon tank with Discus and neons. They eat about 10 oz of worms every two weeks. I keep them in a Tupperware container in a spare refrigerator in the garage. Wife hates them! They live for about 10 days as long as you rinse them off with fresh cool water every couple of days and keep them in the frig.