The bone-eating snot flower, Osedax mucofloris

Behold the glory that is the bone-eating snot flower!  How did I find it?  This thing has its own website, which I found by Googling for its Linnaean name, after being unsatisfied with the description of it found in the Wikipedia article for its genus (the thing was discovered by suspending cow bones above the ocean floor and waiting to see what would show up to eat them).  I got to that genus article by clicking on the link "bone-eating snot flower" in the Wikipedia article on polychaete worms, which I got to by searching Wikipedia for "polychaete" after seeing the word in a blog post by Pharyngula entitled A Face You've Got to Love (which includes a photograph of "Barry", a 4ft long tropical bristle-worm and distant cousin of the snot flower).

Isn't the Internet a wonderful thing?

Sadly, the original article that Pharyngula linked includes this quote from the aquarium's curator: We also discovered that he is covered with thousands of bristles which are capable of inflicting a sting resulting in permanent numbness.  Since Barry is described as an extremely aggressive animal, I'm guessing that multiple aquarium personnel suffered permanent injuries while they were trying to figure out what to do with the mystery creature that was eating the fish in their display tank.  When you take a job like that, you never think it's going to be you.  Permanent injuries always happen to the other guy...