If it is wrong to want a 'Sexy Bobbit-Worm Costume', evidently I will not be alone in hell

Outsourcing the Bobbit-Worm photographs

Wedded as we are at Riddled to the ideal of open discussion and freedom to broach new ideas unfettered by political correctness or indeed by any link to consensus reality, some concepts remain beyond the pale, and are listed on the Window of Shame at the Old Entomologist as unfit topics for conversation (what with the inevitable drunken brawling and misuse of the juke-box).

Such topics include, for instance, Regier's Pancrustacea proposal, which denies that insects are a separate sub-phylum of anthropoda, but instead relegates them to a crown taxon within the crustacea... a relative of lobsters and mantis shrimps and barnacles, but adapted to terrestrial life.

This has two implications, first to break up the familiar Tracheata clade of Hexapoda and Myriapoda, and second to warn anyone invited around to a lobster dinner chez Regier to check their plates carefully for any sign of wetas or cockroaches. Not everyone is over the trauma yet and it only takes one or two pints of Mulleted Ale (it's like mulled ale but with more ET) to reduce Space-Time Eddie to a state of maudlin nostalgia, babbling about "Getting the Tracheata back together again". Then he's feeding money into the juke-box and it is unrelieved cladistics-themed C&W for the rest of the night.

Fortunately the vexed issue of Eunicid taxonomy is not yet on the Windex Expurgatorius so I can safely refer you to Salazar-Vallejo et al. on the topic, and to Schulze's rejoinder. The situation is all cattywampus and higgledy-piggledy, and it is not even clear whether there is a single species of Bobbit worm -- the rainbow hued version, Eunice aphroditois -- featuring in all the recent blog activity. For here is an expert from the University of Wallawalla to tell us of a different species, the white-banded bobbit worm E. valens, with a passing mention of the Kobe bobbit worm E. kobiensis.

Note distinctive white band and
gills beginning on setiger 3

Not content with outsourcing the images of E. aphroditois, we also outsource to other websites for descriptions of its vile life-style and predatory habits.

In addition to the absence of Sexy Bobbit-worm costumes, there is also no such thing as Bobbit-Worm Brandy. This is although in every second Thai or Laotian village the local vintner is pickling centipedes in bottles of whisky and brandy for the tourist trade. Even Chilopoda rate higher in public esteem than annelid worms of Family Eunicidae.

Perhaps it will help to stick googly eyes on them.
 
BONUS Alternative title:

Knock knock!

Who's there?

Eunicidae.

Eunicidae who?

Eu 'n' I never say die!