(tense music)
- Oh, it wants to bite me.
(sighs loudly)
I'm actually going to get chomped.
Ready?
One.
Two.
Three.
(tense music)
(yelling loudly)
Ah, he's biting me!
He's got me good.
(groaning loudly)
Oh, he's latched.
He's latched.
He won't let go.
(dramatic music)
Oh, got one.
Oh yeah.
Woo, yeah!
This, believe it or not,
is one of the most famous creatures
ever featured on the Brave Wilderness channel.
That's right,
the original bloodworm video now has over 73 million views,
but in that original adventure,
we did leave a few things on the table
that are definitely worth revisiting.
Namely the venomous bite of this creature.
Actually, did Coyote take a bite?
(Coyote yelling loudly)
- [Host] Did he bite you?
- He got me!
- [Host] (laughs loudly) I got that!
- He got me, I felt it.
It was a little pinch.
- [Host] Let me see, where'd he get you?
- [Coyote] Right there.
Right in the crux of my finger.
- I think we can do better than just a pinch
from one of the world's only venomous worms.
In fact,
we learned something very important about this creature
between the last adventure and today
that's going to help us achieve a bite on camera,
but before I go getting myself chomped
for this new bloodworm experiment,
we need to find a whole lot more worms than just this one.
Let's keep digging.
Bloodworms hunt for prey in the tidal mud flats
of both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts
of the United States and Canada.
They have also earned the nickname sludgeworm,
since their habitat consists of thick mud
and quicksand that can easily swallow your boots whole.
To find these slimy predators,
worm diggers use special rakes to quickly
peel back mud and reveal worms on the move
that could be sold as prize fishing bait.
And while they can be difficult to find,
some of the best worm diggers in Maine
could collect up to 1000 worms a day,
with the largest ones growing up to 15 inches long.
After hours of digging,
and covered head to toe in mud and sweat,
we filled the bucket and set the stage
for one of the worst bites we've ever filmed.
Welcome to the bloodworm bite table.
What I have in front of me here
are five very large bloodworms.
No,
these are not your granddad's night crawlers, folks.
These are natural-born killers.
Armed with four venomous fangs and an appetite to match,
we have been told that these worms pack one heck of a bite.
Some people say that it's like a bee sting,
and locals have even told us that they've seen worm diggers
crawling out of the mud flats in near tears
from being bitten by these carnivorous worms.
But there is one key piece of information
that we learned from the original bloodworm video to today,
and that is you can actually head a bloodworm.
Similar to how a herpetologist would head
a venomous snake to keep it from biting them,
I will actually attempt to grab
the proboscis once it shoots out,
and then intentionally inflict my first bite.
And yes, I said first bite.
There's gonna be more than one.
Now what I'm going to try to do is head the proboscis,
and while I'm attempting to do this,
let's review some of the most interesting
facts about this bizarre marine oddity.
The bloodworm is a venomous segmented worm
that hunts invertebrates and other marine creatures.
Armed with four razor sharp fangs
and a projectile mouth called a proboscis,
they are voracious predators,
and are as aggressive as they are bizarre.
One of the most shocking things about these worms
is how normal they can appear,
and then in a split second,
transformed into one of the most
alien-looking life forms you've ever seen.
And as if this wasn't creepy enough, things get even worse.
Once the blood worm has its prey
ensnared in those hook jaws,
it will inject it with a paralyzing venom
that incapacitates the victim
so it can be digested and eaten alive.
This venom is chemically similar to that of a scorpion
and is known to cause severe reactions in humans,
including burning, tissue damage,
and anaphylactic shock.
Please do not attempt what you're about to see.
Oh, almost got it.
Ah, I missed it.
Oh, oh!
Come on.
All right.
I've got it.
Oh, wants to bite me.
That is the proboscis of one of the biggest
bloodworms I have ever seen.
Holy moly.
That's over a foot, for sure.
Okay, time to get bitten by one of
the only venomous worms on the planet,
the bloodworm.
We've got a good hold on it.
Here we go.
One.
Two.
Three.
Ah!
(grunting loudly)
Oh, look at that.
Ah, he won't let go.
He won't let go.
(grunting loudly)
Oh, he's in.
He's really on there, guys.
I can't get him off.
He's biting me, he's got me good.
Yeah, he got me.
Oh man, it didn't break the skin.
It was definitely latched into me,
but it's fangs I don't think are long enough
to break the skin of my finger.
I wonder if I try on a softer part.
Let's try my wrist.
It's a little bit thinner there, a little bit softer.
All right, here we go.
Let's go in for the second bite on three.
One.
Two.
Three.
Oh yeah, see him tug on the skin?
He's in, he's latched.
He's latched!
Yeah! (groans loudly)
I can't get him off.
Yeah, he's got me.
You see that?
Keep rolling, keep rolling.
I'm gonna try to pry him off.
Oh, he's really latched on.
(groans loudly) Come on.
Let go, let go.
He won't let go, he won't let go.
Gotta get him off.
Oh yeah.
That was a full on bloodworm bite.
Boy, that burns.
Gosh, you get that shot?
His fangs were all the way latched in.
Oh.
Oh, that burns.
Oh man, yes.
You can see that there wasn't much
blood produced in the bite,
but I've got blisters forming,
and that's likely due to all the inflammation and swelling.
I seal it in the nervous system.
My wrist is screaming right now.
Super painful burning sensation,
a lot like a wasp or a bee sting.
Those fangs are like little talons,
and it just grabbed right through the skin,
and did not wanna let go.
They were like barbs on a fishing hook.
They were just in there.
And really, I wasn't able to get the worm off
until it decided to relax a little bit and I pried it back,
but those fangs are definitely sharp enough.
Yikes, that hurt.
Now that we've witnessed what a single
bloodworm is capable of,
let's see what happens when I submerge
my hands in over a hundred of them.
Do bloodworms hunt in packs?
We're about to find out.
Before I attempt to feed my hands
to these four-fanged terrors,
let's take a look at what they did
to some normal prey from the wild.
While related and very similar looking to bloodworms,
the sandworm is not nearly as formidable.
And after a short time in a small aquarium,
we can see they are also very much their food.
The venomous bloodworms attacked
and broke down the sandworms quickly,
and what you're seeing now are signs
of both chewing and dismemberment.
A clear sign of active predation.
If you thought one bloodworm bite was bad,
check this out.
Whoa!
Look at all these worms.
That is a container filled with
over 100 bloodworms in this tank,
and I'm going to attempt to submerge my hands
into this tank of bloodworms for two minutes,
all of that to figure out do bloodworms hunt in packs.
Ready?
On three.
One.
Two.
Three.
Oh, that feels so weird.
(tense music)
(yells quickly) I just took my first bite.
Hit me on the pinkie.
It was a bite and release.
Oh, I can feel 'em.
Yeah, I can feel more proboscis going.
It's like you can feel them tense up,
and then boof, it fires out.
It's killing me.
You can see them wriggling,
and they have their little sensory tips
sensing their environment for anything
that they can eat or get those jaws on.
Oh, I can see a lot of them are shooting
their proboscis out already.
They sense something foreign in their environment.
I got to look away.
This is like too much anxiety
just looking at this container.
This has got to be the creepiest thing
I have ever done in my entire life.
Just so disgusting feeling all those
worms wriggling round my fingers.
One thing that we noticed earlier is that
as soon as one of them fires their proboscis,
it seems to create a rapid fire effect.
They all do it at the same time.
- [Coyote] They're going crazy.
- They are, I feel them wriggling around my fingers.
Oh man, oh yeah.
Ah!
Got another one, mm.
Oh my goodness, so creepy.
All right, how much time left?
- [Coyote] 30 seconds left.
- All right.
This has gotta be the longest two minutes of my life.
Two minutes feel like an eternity.
Ah!
Oh!
Oh, the bloodworm bite tank.
This is horrible!
Give me a countdown.
- [Coyote] Five, four--
- Ah, got me again!
- [Coyote] Three, two,
one!
- Ah!
Definitely got nailed on the pinkie on this side,
and I got two nips between my fingers,
here and here.
Definitely got nipped three times.
Wow.
That was weird.
What a crazy day on the Brave Wilderness channel.
Well, I don't know if we can definitively say
that bloodworms like to hunt in packs,
but I'll tell you this.
They sure don't mind sharing a meal.
But man, that original bite?
That was a serious, serious chomp from a bloodworm.
It is absolutely swollen and very tender to the touch.
I have a feeling I'm gonna be in pain
for quite a while on that one.
(voiceover) And I was absolutely correct.
The bite of a bloodworm was no joke,
and ended up becoming one of the most
painful experiences I've endured so far.
Overnight the swelling increased dramatically,
and the burning around the bite spread
through my hand and up my arm,
nearly locking my wrist.
Then days after the initial pain subsided,
I had a secondary reaction,
where the bite zone flared up with an aggressive rash
and itched at least twice as much as poison ivy.
In all it took three weeks to heal from the bloodworm venom,
and I am here to officially say the scary
rumors of bloodworms are 100% true.
So while these creatures are an important part
of the inner-tidal ecosystem and a valued
resource for fishing towns across Maine,
you absolutely want to avoid their bite at all costs.
Ouch, exclamation point!
(mud squelching quietly)
(animal howling loudly)