Peanuts and friends

  

Eric snapped this great photo of three peanut worms (Phascolosoma agassizii) yesterday in Monterey County.  It's one of the best photos I've seen of Phascolosoma's tentacles.  They use that beautiful ring of tentacles to reach out to find food particles on nearby surfaces.  

The tentacles are hard to photograph, though, because they're not out for very long, and then the peanut worm retracts them into the long trunk-like introvert (in the photo, the introverts have dark pigment bands). 

P.S.  I first wrote about peanut worms back in 2013.  To learn more about them, check out the post called "Introducing the introvert" from 31 January 2013. 

P.P.S.  If you're wondering, the purple rods in the photo are sea urchin spines at the bottom of the tidepool.