A close-up view (scale: 0.25 mm) of a male Osedax priapus dissected from a bone. Credit: Greg Rouse

Thrilled to have my first post up on the mighty and brilliant Deep Sea News site. Click the link to dive into the sex lives of extreme scavengers of the deep, Osedax. They are bone-devouring worms that lack a mouth or gut and until recently, seemed to have a thing for micro-males. A new study published by the fantastic deep-sea invert expert, Greg Rouse, at Scripps, describes a new species where, lo and behold, the males have escaped the evolutionary clutches of enslaved stunted existence to develop into free, independent beings that use their bodies as a giant phallus. Rock on deep sea sex.

http://deepseanews.com/2014/12/all-fe...