These aren’t some George Romero-esque threat to other invertebrates, but a relaively recently-discovered (2002) and named species of undersea worm that feeds off whale skeletons by dissolving the hard parts with acid and eating the remaining collagen and fat. News-writers can’t resist the name, or headlines like ** How Zombie Worms Have Sex in Whale Bones **. Their more sedate scientific name is osedax (“bone eating”).
I found out about these from a news story about the discovery of a minke whale skeleton (“whale fall”) near the Antarctic. To my surprise, discoveries of such whale skeletons is surprisingly rare. Mybe because of the Zombie Worms, which would explain why we only found out about them a decade ago.