While shrimp eels are native to the Carolinas, they are rarely seen and little studied because they spend most of their lives embedded in the sea floor, Weeks said. Rather than drill themselves headfirst into the sediment like many other benthic, or bottom-dwelling, organisms, however, the eels use their tails to dig holes, she said. The burrowing behavior Grondalski and Ruff observed is a trademark characteristic, DNR spokesperson Erin Weeks wrote to Newsweek. The head belonged to what the DNR identified as a shrimp eel, a type of snake eel. While plenty commented on the animal's appearance, calling it "scary-looking" and comparing it to the antagonists of the 1990 movie Tremors, none had any idea what it was before the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (DNR) weighed in, the Packet reports. He and Ruff saw an additional 10 or 12 heads of the same species during the course of their walk.ĭescribing himself and Ruff as "stumped," Grondalski took several photos and a video of the mysterious animal and shared one on Facebook in the hopes that another Hilton Head resident would recognize it, according to the Packet. "We've been living here maybe five years, but we've been coming to Hilton Head since the early '80s, and we've never seen anything like this," Grondalski told the Packet. Silver in color, it repeatedly opened and closed its mouth as the couple watched in bafflement, according to local newspaper The Island Packet. When Grondalski and Ruff approached, the head withdrew before emerging again. While taking a walk along the coastline of Hilton Head Island in South Carolina last week, Joe Grondalski and Shannon Ruff spotted something out of the ordinary: a small head poking out of the sand.
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