Raleigh, N.C. -- Experts said a popular YouTube video of a moving, slimy mass in a Raleigh, N.C., sewer depicts a colony of tubifex
worms or invertebrates called byrozoan.
Ed Buchan, an environmental coordinator with the Raleigh Public Utilities Department, said the video, which was posted to YouTube in April and was
chosen Wednesday as the top viral video on the Internet by TV Week, depicts a colony of tubifex worms, which can form clusters of up to 1 inch in diameter, WRAL-TV, Raleigh, reported Thursday.
However, Thomas Kwak, a biology professor at North Carolina State University's Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, identified the creatures as a cluster of byrozoan, invertebrates found in both fresh and salt water.
