What if your calendar ran on a worm that splits itself in half?

Posted 4 hours ago by

BoingBoing

Once or twice a year, on reefs across Vanuatu, Samoa, Fiji, Timor-Leste, and other islands of the southwestern Pacific, the palolo worm tears itself in half. The front portion stays put in the coral rubble where the worm normally hides. The back end grows tiny eyes, swells with gametes — blue-green if female, orange if male — and rises toward the surface, where it ruptures, spilling its cargo into the sea.