According to scientists, rare "fireworms" discovered in Japan have"Striking" resemblance to the ancients
Japanese scientists described three species of sea worms, who named them after folklore demons because of their otherworldly glow.
Newly discovered species named Polycirrus onibi,Polycirrus aoandon and Polycirrus ikeguchii belong to the family of animals known as bristleworms. They usually live in the shallow waters of Japanese rivers and streams. The researchers published the details in an article in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
Creatures emit blue-violet luminescentglow, so at night they appear to be misty wandering paper lanterns. The names are also inspired by Japanese folklore. For example, the onibi (or demonic fire) is a wandering youkai that takes the form of a small floating ball of light that appears in remote mountains and forests to lead unsuspecting travelers astray.
Yokai is a Japanese supernatural being.mythology, a kind of obake. In Japanese, the word "yokai" has a very broad meaning and can refer to almost all supernatural creatures of Japanese mythology, or even borrowed from European.
Ao-andon is the embodiment of human horror;A yōkai that can only appear when people tell ghost stories by the light of paper lanterns. According to superstition, one day the lanterns slowly went out, and in their dim pale blue light appeared the ghost of a demonic woman in a white kimono with sharp blackened teeth; claws instead of hands and horns protruded from under her long dark hair. This is how the myth of ao-andon appeared.
The name Ikeguchi does not refer to Japanese folklore. Instead, it honors the former director of the aquarium, Notojima, who helped discover the worm.
Polycirrus worms have tentacles thatgrow out of their mouths, allowing them to sift through river sediments in search of food. This genus belongs to a diverse family of worms that have survived each of the five mass extinctions on Earth.
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Cover: Polycirrus onibi, one of three new glow-in-the-dark worm species discovered by researchers.
Image Credit: Naoto Jimi/Nagoya University