Nature occasionally mistakes restraint for a failure of imagination.
Consider the bootlace worm, Lineus longissimus: a marine creature ordinarily about fifty feet long, only a few millimeters wide, and sufficiently elastic that one historic specimen was reported at roughly 180 feet—though even its admirers concede the measuring may have become a little enthusiastic.
As if improbable length were not enough, it also secretes toxic mucus containing compounds scientists have studied as potential insecticides.
It is currently a candidate for Invertebrate of the Year.
One admires the commitment to a single idea.
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