The Yoda Worms | Star Wars Week

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Welcome back to Star Wars week here on the channel. With this fourth installment, we can now turn our attention to animals that are indeed found in perhaps the most alien environments to us at least. That being the deep ocean. This is Yoda, not Grand Master Yoda, but Yoda pupurissa.

[00:00:16]For some background information before we get into Yoda specifically, they belong to a group known as the acorn worms or enteropneusta, which from vertebrates that belong to the hemichordata class of invertebrates being thought generally to be the sister group of the echinoderms.

[00:00:32]There are 111 known species alongside the one I'll be talking about where they have for a good while being thought to all live in the sediments on the seabed either being suspension or deposit feeders.

[00:00:43]This however changed in the 2005 description of a new family, the Torquaratoridae, which are limited to living in the deep sea with them able to rise into the water column to find new foraging areas.

[00:00:55]They also produce secretions out of the body which contain elements like iodine giving them a smell like what is often found in hospitals as iodoform is commonly used as a disinfectant.

[00:01:06]With this background details sources, we can now get into discussing Yoda or what kind of looks like him anyway.

[00:01:12]These animals are found well down in the ocean at around 2 and 1/2 km or 1 and 1/2 miles in depth in the Atlantic Ocean.

[00:01:19]They belong to the previously mentioned Torquaratoridae family so they are capable of being found drifting through the water column.

[00:01:25]This one was found using still and video cameras during a research mission along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Iceland and the Azores and were found along two other acorn worms being two Gwilliam cinnamomeum and albatrosses acidus where Yoda and T. cinnamomeum being found on the seafloor and A. acidus being found floating about 1 m above the seafloor.

[00:01:49]The Yoda worms as they are known are around 12 through 19 cm in length and have a reddish purple color to them overall which is what gives them their species name, purpurata, which means purple in Latin.

[00:02:00]However, they aren't green like Yoda.

[00:02:02]So, why do they need the Star Wars inspired name?

[00:02:05]Well, this is down to them having large lateral lips, which reminded researchers of the little guy. And another neat thing unrelated to the naming is that members of the species were found to be hermaphrodites, the first ever discovered in the phylum of Hemichordata to which they belong, with numerous separate ovaries and testes being found in the genital wings.

[00:02:25]This isn't where things end, however, as another species of Yoda was described in 2022, being Yoda demiankoopi, which are found at sites from Oregon and all the way down to Mexico.

[00:02:36]They differ from the first species by having, for one, much wider lips, which are indented by deep ciliary groove from adjusting substrates and conveying it into the mouth. And then, as well as that, having a connective tissue bulge of unknown significance, which runs down regions of their intestine.

[00:02:52]Their species name this time, instead of being a color, instead honors Dr. Damian Koop of the University of Sydney, who sadly passed away in 2021. And so, his name being used for this worm is a good way for him to live on for the colleagues, friends, and family who knew him.

[00:03:09]All in all, I thank you for watching this video on these animals and that you may have learned something new.

[00:03:14]If you'd like to see more from this channel, be sure to subscribe if you haven't already.

[00:03:18]And with that, stay tuned for tomorrow to see some more Star Wars named animals.