Deep-sea Osedax worms have no mouth and no gut; they bore into whale bones with acid-secreting roots, and each female can carry a harem of microscopic dwarf males inside her tube, sometimes more than 600.

These worms strip sunken whale skeletons so efficiently that a carcass can vanish from the seafloor in about a decade, recycling nutrients in the deep ocean.

Source: MBARI, Osedax Studies