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How then do shipworms do what they do?

Dr. Distel’s main focus is shipworms, a group of clams that tunnel through waterlogged wood, and that may be a source for new antibiotics.

Wild shipworms are eaten in the Philippines -- either raw, or battered and fried like calamari.

Matters reached crisis-point in the early 1980s, when it was discovered that the enormous wooden piles which hold up the entire structure were infested with teredo shipworm.

The only part of the shipworm that extends beyond the wood are two siphons the animal uses to breathe and to expel waste.