Monday, April 18, 2011

Animal of the Week - Earthworms

Image from gagetscience.com

Earthworms are wicked cool creatures. The tunnel through soil helping air and water to circulate more freely and their poop is down right legendary. Worms eat all kinds of dead material, chew it up and then poop it out. Worm poop is called castings.

Ranging in size between a few inches and 22 feet long, earthworms can be found on every continent except Antarctica. The biggest worms are found in souther Africa and Australia. There are some worms in the Pacific northwest can be around two feet long. One species in the Philippines is blue!

Worms don't have eyes like we do, but they do have cells in their body that are sensitive to light. Generally they burrow or turn away from the light.

Worms breath through their skin - so if you pick them up - and who doesn't! - make sure you don't have bug spray on them.

1 comment:

  1. I live in the Pacific Northwest in a region called the Palouse. We have an earthworm here that is being studied (the Giant Palouse Earthworm) - supposedly it gets up to 2 feet in length.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Palouse_earthworm

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