Word To Use Today: trochelminth.

Do you know what a trochelminth is?

Like to try a guess?

Whatever it is, it sounds utterly delicious - and it is, if you're a jellyfish. Or a salmon.

A trochelminth can be many thousands of things, but they're all tiny worm-like animals found in water (though if the water disappears some of them can survive, dried-up, for decades). They can be carnivorous or herbivorous, but a lot of them eat dead stuff. They can reproduce sexually, asexually, or take turns in doing both.

A lot of them form part of what is generally called plankton.

Here's one type, the beautiful Brachionus quadridentatus:




And this double portrait is of Diplodasys rothei:




illustration by Nicobola 


The word trochelminth isn't used very much by biologists any  more because they've split up the little beasts into rotifers and gastrotricha, but it's too charming a word to let fall into complete disuse.

And anything that reminds us that our world, the world we live in, depends upon hordes of tiny tidier-uppers has to be a good and valuable thing.

I suppose in that way they're a bit like brownies:


text/illustration by Cox/Palmer

Except for, you know, the actually existing thing.

Word To Use Today: trochelminth. This word comes from the Greek words trokhos, wheel, from trekhein to run, and helminth, a worm.