What\u2019s armored, covered in worms, and has a rasping tongue? If you said the stuff of nightmares, you\u2019re not wrong. Luckily, however, the critter in question is pretty small\u2014and now famous.<\/p>\n
Meet Ferreiraella populi, a very weird new species of deep-sea mollusk. It\u2019s a kind of herbivorous mollusc called a chiton<\/a> and sports an iron-covered radula (the aforementioned rasping tongue), eight armored shell plates, and poop-eating worms close to its tail. It received its first official scientific description on Friday, in a Biodiversity Data Journal study<\/a>.<\/p>\n Social media-famous critter <\/p>\n A chiton\u2019s \u201coverall body plan is quite good at attaching to things. And for a lot of chitons, that means rocks,\u201d Ze Frank, a science YouTuber, explained in a video<\/a>. \u201cThose plates give them some protection, but because they\u2019re separate, they\u2019re bendy-bendy. So, they can kind of mold themselves to uneven surfaces while they use their radula to scrape and eat algae.\u201d<\/p>\n Researchers discovered it 18,045 feet (5,500 meters) below the surface of the water in Japan\u2019s Izu-Ogasawara Trench in 2024. It joins a pre-established genus (Ferreiraella) of rare and snobbish mollusks\u2014they live strictly on wood that has drifted down to the deep sea. In fact, their identification bolsters the idea that these environments are home to mysterious, very specialized groups of animals.<\/p>\n Frank participated in the naming of this odd little guy by asking viewers to send ideas for the specific epithet (the second part of the name) to go along with Ferreiraella (the genus), as well as explanations for the suggestion. He and a team of scientists received over 8,000 social media submissions in a single week. In a follow-up video<\/a>, Frank highlighted a fantastic one that, in my humble opinion, should have been the first-place winner: Ferreiraella ellaellaeheheh. (If I have to explain that reference, go listen to some Rihanna and be ashamed of yourself).<\/p>\n Of the people <\/p>\n The first individual or team to publish a new species\u2019 scientific description gets to choose its name while respecting certain rules. Frequently, specific epithets are inspired by places, people, physical characteristics, or mythology.<\/p>\n Julia Sigwart, a co-author of the study from the Senckenberg Research Institute & Museum, ultimately chose Ferreiraella populi, with \u201cpopuli\u201d meaning \u201cof the people\u201d in Latin. While that might sound boring for such a funky creature, 11 people separately submitted \u201cpopuli.\u201d Other contenders included Ferreiraella ohmu, in honor of an animal similar to a chiton in a Studio Ghibli film, and acknowledging the mollusk\u2019s discovery in Japan.<\/p>\n