A video was unleashed on an unsuspecting world yesterday that sent collective chills up the spines of all who watched it, myself included. It appeared to depict some bizarre creature living in the sewers that seemed like it had escaped from a leathery egg like the movie Alien. Some people thought it was CGI. Some people believed it was a viral marketing campaign. Everyone hoped it wasn’t real.

Bad news: It’s real.

According to Dr. Timothy S. Wood of the International Bryozoology Association, the thing in the video is a huge clump of tubificids, i.e., annelid worms.

He explains:

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.

Tubifex in Action Under Laboratory Conditions