Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant
Speaker 1: and that makes his debut take two. Rarely do we
Speaker 1: have a take two, very rarely, but we did today.
Speaker 1: Yeah we did. We started just kind of talking and
Speaker 1: shop and Jerry's like, what are you guys doing? Yea, um,
Speaker 1: but anyway, here we are. We're back, We're happy, everything's
Speaker 1: good and um we're we're gonna talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about earthworms, right, Yes? Are you feeling good about this one?
Speaker 1: I am very interesting stuff. I wrote this article specifically
Speaker 1: so we can podcast on it. So, chuck y, have
Speaker 1: you heard of a man named Charles Darwin? You know
Speaker 1: I love Chuckie d So chuck Chuck the Charles Darwin
Speaker 1: um very famous for the On the Origin of the
Speaker 1: Species um incredibly important work. Did you know though, that
Speaker 1: The Origin of the Species was out sold in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century by another book of his called The Formation
Speaker 1: of Vegetable Mold through the Action of Worms, with observations
Speaker 1: on their habits that sold more copies for real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: through throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. It was
Speaker 1: published in one UM and I think like the Origin
Speaker 1: of the species came a little after that. So, but
Speaker 1: just during the nineteenth century for a while there, um,
Speaker 1: the formation of vegetable mold was crazy out selling on
Speaker 1: the origin of the species. I saw today where he
Speaker 1: studied earthworms for thirty nine years. Yeah, it was. This
Speaker 1: book was very near and dear to his heart, like
Speaker 1: this topic was. He spent a lot of time really
Speaker 1: looking at earthworm. I guess he died because why would
Speaker 1: you give up at thirty nine? I would say, let's
Speaker 1: just make it an even forty. I think he wrote
Speaker 1: the book and was like, Okay, don't you go. I'm done.
Speaker 1: I'm onto some Let's go to Galapagos exactly you know,
Speaker 1: um he uh. He came up with in this thirty
Speaker 1: nine years and in this book some very um, very
Speaker 1: well understood observations that are still accepted today. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, we have a quote from
Speaker 1: him as read by him. All right, you want to hear.
Speaker 1: It may be doubted whether there are many other animals
Speaker 1: which have played so important apart in the history of
Speaker 1: the world, as have these lowly organized creatures. So there
Speaker 1: you have it. Wow, the earthworm is very, very important.
Speaker 1: I didn't know he talked like that. I didn't either.
Speaker 1: It's kind of surprising, um, but he. Uh. This this idea,
Speaker 1: this concept that the earthworm is extremely important to the
Speaker 1: earth was kind of put forth by Darwins and accepted
Speaker 1: as gospel since them and in the decades and centuries
Speaker 1: since Darwin. He did such a good job that earthworm
Speaker 1: research kind of fell by the wayside. Scientific community was classifying,
Speaker 1: classifying as extinct, like worms they just hadn't seen in
Speaker 1: a while that would just later pop back up, like
Speaker 1: the giant pelouse earthworm in the Pacific northwest of the
Speaker 1: United States. It was thought to be extinct, classified as
Speaker 1: such in the eighties, and then in two thousen it
Speaker 1: pops up and they're like, oh, it's not extinct. The
Speaker 1: worm popped up. And that happens a lot with earthworms,
Speaker 1: like people just classified him as extinct. So this kind
Speaker 1: of like these appearances of kind of reinvigorated science and
Speaker 1: it's inquiry into earthworms. I wonder how he got on it, Darwin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean out of all the different things he was studying.
Speaker 1: I wonder how he honed in on the earthworm and
Speaker 1: knew its value, just because if no one else had
Speaker 1: studied its value, I would never look at an earthworm
Speaker 1: and think it's very valid able at all. No, but
Speaker 1: people before Darwin realized the value of earthworms like aristotles
Speaker 1: of the soil. No, but he's the one who dedicated
Speaker 1: thirty nine years to studying them. Um So just in
Speaker 1: sheer size alone, um, I guess in sheer volume is
Speaker 1: a better way to put it. Earthworms are there. They
Speaker 1: have a substantial impact on earth. I think, so three
Speaker 1: thousand species. Notice it didn't say species species. You know
Speaker 1: people say species. Sorry species Germans know a lot of
Speaker 1: people say species as species, species, species, species. I don't
Speaker 1: know which one I say. I think both acceptable. I
Speaker 1: think not species. Yeah. Uh. They have reigned in size
Speaker 1: from about a centimeter to nine feet, although they go
Speaker 1: away more than that. Yeah. I think the world record
Speaker 1: I found was one in South Africa was twenty two
Speaker 1: ft long. Twenty two ft long earthworm. That's huge, and
Speaker 1: there are plenty others. Japan has some giant ones, Australia
Speaker 1: does too. Of course, I found one. We'll talk about that.
Speaker 1: Lots of giant freaks of nature. But here's here's the
Speaker 1: cool stat of the day for me. Uh Plus, we
Speaker 1: get to say the word hectare just close to two
Speaker 1: and a half acres. Yeah, it's like two point four
Speaker 1: seven single hecked air. You can find five hundred thousand
Speaker 1: to two million worms, and their total biomass wet biomass
Speaker 1: equals ten times a total weight of all the other
Speaker 1: animals living above ground combined on that same size spot
Speaker 1: of land, on that same heck there. Yeah, that's nutty.
Speaker 1: That is nutty, especially considering that worms don't go that
Speaker 1: deep into the soil. Let's say there's twelve deer on
Speaker 1: that heck dare I mean, that's gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: of weight right there. It's just from the deer. Say
Speaker 1: say each deer weighs a hundred and fifty pounds, it's
Speaker 1: like eight hundred pounds and a dozen deer some amount
Speaker 1: of kilograms. Yeah, that's probably like n So the point
Speaker 1: is a lot of worms. Yeah, there are, there's a
Speaker 1: ton of worms. Um, they're spread all over the place.
Speaker 1: But here's an interesting fact. If um, if you've read fourteen,
Speaker 1: you probably already know this Charles Man's brilliant follow up
Speaker 1: to his triumphant I can't wait for fo Yeah, look
Speaker 1: out for that one. He's just gonna pick some random
Speaker 1: date like um. If the if you go into uh,
Speaker 1: the average North American woods in the northern United States,
Speaker 1: say um, and you find an earthworm, that earthworm. Had
Speaker 1: you dug in the same spot five hundred years before,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have found any earthworms there. Like all earthworms
Speaker 1: in North America and Canada above about the forty degree
Speaker 1: latitude UM are new. They're relatively recent immigrants from Asia
Speaker 1: and Europe, and they hitched a ride thanks to the
Speaker 1: coling to America in plants the soil. Yeah, root balls
Speaker 1: that were attached to plants um that were imported to
Speaker 1: the United States and Canada. UM from Asia and Europe. Yes, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I have a question. Yes, I have a few questions
Speaker 1: for you, because you wrote this and it's always nice
Speaker 1: to speak to the author, and you're right in front
Speaker 1: of me. So how's how's that I'm right here? Uh?
Speaker 1: Do they know what was here before the ice age
Speaker 1: that killed off all the original native species? Surely there
Speaker 1: were worms. Then it's an excellent question. No, they don't know.
Speaker 1: Now they know that, I guess not because it was
Speaker 1: pretty ice age. It's not like they had records. There
Speaker 1: were some there's there's fossil there's fossil records of earthworms
Speaker 1: that go back like a hundred and sixty five million years,
Speaker 1: like there was a huge giant earthworm that it was
Speaker 1: armor plated. Right. But yeah, but the stuff in North America,
Speaker 1: apparently the fossil record is fairly incomplete here. Um, they
Speaker 1: do suspect that a lot of worms made their way
Speaker 1: southward towards warmer ground when these glacial ice sheets started
Speaker 1: bearing down from Canada. Everything, a lot of stuff died,
Speaker 1: some stuff high tail it south. So you can bet
Speaker 1: that if you go to southern California or Mexico and
Speaker 1: big and find a worm, that's probably the same species
Speaker 1: that were higher up, species that were further north, you know,
Speaker 1: prior to the last because you make a point later
Speaker 1: that it's considered an invasive species because it's not native.
Speaker 1: But I thought, well, surely they weren't that different before
Speaker 1: the ice age, right. Well, the species the species that
Speaker 1: are here, especially um, the common European earthworm, which we
Speaker 1: here in the United States called nightcrawlers. That's from Europe,
Speaker 1: which is why it's the common European nightworm. Those are
Speaker 1: recent immigrants. Those guys weren't here before, right. So the
Speaker 1: other reason they're invasive, Chuck, is since the end of
Speaker 1: the last ice Age, say ten to twenty thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: these woodlands in the north in the United States, uh developed,
Speaker 1: they adapted, they changed to life without earthworms. Now they're
Speaker 1: having to adapt to life with earthworms. That makes sense,
Speaker 1: which makes earthworms invasive. Now, yeah, I get that, that
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense. All right. Well, hey, look at there.
Speaker 1: We covered a bit at the end. Yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 1: get out here early now thanks. Another cool point you
Speaker 1: make is if you dig down into the earth in
Speaker 1: your backyard, in the earth a couple of feet, you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna find all three classifications of earthworm because they're
Speaker 1: they're classified by where they live in the soil. Because
Speaker 1: they're also similar in appearance. I mean, yeah, except for
Speaker 1: like maybe how thick around they are, how many segments
Speaker 1: they have, um, how long they are. That's pretty much
Speaker 1: the differences in earthworms. They're all very similar like wherever
Speaker 1: you are. But there are three classes. And like you said,
Speaker 1: they're based on where they live, Like there's the ones
Speaker 1: above ground. Yeah, I've been pronouncing in my head eyak,
Speaker 1: but GX sounds a lot I like gay do you like? Guy?
Speaker 1: Let's go with that. Well, because it's a it's derivative
Speaker 1: of gaya earth and eppie is above. So this is this,
Speaker 1: This is the classification of earthworms that live like in
Speaker 1: the leaf litter, which is also called the litter horizon,
Speaker 1: that pile of leaves and organic material that that covers
Speaker 1: the soil that these red wigglers. Red worms have a
Speaker 1: lot to do with the fact that it's you know,
Speaker 1: eventually gonna be black and slimy. Yeah, almost all of
Speaker 1: the fact all they have almost everything to do with that.
Speaker 1: I mean there's other like microbes and protozoa and other
Speaker 1: stuff like that breaking it down, but the worms are
Speaker 1: the ones that can get it done. So those red
Speaker 1: wigglers are fun to play with if you're a kid.
Speaker 1: Uh so are the next level down you get to
Speaker 1: the indo gaeic as we'll say. Now they live in
Speaker 1: the top soil that sort of you know how deep
Speaker 1: like the first several inches, Yeah, you know, like the
Speaker 1: dark top soil. Good stuff. As I like to call it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they spend their whole lit beneath the soil, which
Speaker 1: is why they're usually like very light in color, gray pinkish,
Speaker 1: they're white, kind of uglier. Yeah. Have you ever seen
Speaker 1: that movie The Layer of the White Worm. That's a
Speaker 1: great horror. Yeah, I've heard of Hugh Grants first movies.
Speaker 1: Awesome was he the white Worm? No? He was the dude. Okay,
Speaker 1: he played a man. Uh. You say because they live
Speaker 1: under the soil full time, that the least amount of
Speaker 1: information is known about them. But another question the next
Speaker 1: level down that uh and and essek they hold the
Speaker 1: nightcrawlers the deepest dwelling ones. But it seems like we
Speaker 1: know more about them than the other guys, a little
Speaker 1: pink and gray guys. So why would that be? Well,
Speaker 1: the reason is is because the little pink and gray guys,
Speaker 1: the epigaic ones um, spend their whole lives underground, so
Speaker 1: they just stay there. Yes, okay, they also make horizontal burrows, right,
Speaker 1: so like they don't have to come up at all.
Speaker 1: They don't. They have almost nothing to do with leaf decomposition.
Speaker 1: So the nightcrawlers come up and then go back down
Speaker 1: exactly Not only do nightcrawlers come up, they come up
Speaker 1: and travel as far as like sixty two ft in
Speaker 1: a night looking for food. Like they hang out above ground.
Speaker 1: The epigaic ones you have to dig down for them.
Speaker 1: They're not coming up to greet you. So the scientists
Speaker 1: don't have spades. That's what I'm saying, man Like the
Speaker 1: like science generally was like, Okay, Darwin wrote the book
Speaker 1: on earthworms. You don't have to any more investigation about that. Interesting.
Speaker 1: Another cool fact about the nightcrawler is that they go
Speaker 1: upstairs to to grab some food and bring it back down.
Speaker 1: They're like, hey, that leaf is really choice and moist,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna grab it and take it back downstairs
Speaker 1: and just chow. So my little belly bursts. I love that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it also kind of gives you an idea of
Speaker 1: like just how powerful like a nightcrawler is it drags
Speaker 1: its food back to its house. You know. I used
Speaker 1: to hate fishing with worms. That's that and the potential.
Speaker 1: One time I went fishing and caught brim, and um,
Speaker 1: I didn't have a hook remover and this thing, this
Speaker 1: brim swallowed this hook like crazy, and I was trying
Speaker 1: so hard to get it out, and it was just
Speaker 1: like obvious that this weren't This fish was dying. And
Speaker 1: one of his buddies was just sitting there almost at
Speaker 1: the bank, almost up on the ground, watching me, just
Speaker 1: looking at me like why did you do that? So
Speaker 1: that and then the that she club that one, I
Speaker 1: was like stopped looking at me. Fishing just punched the water.
Speaker 1: Um that the potential of a fish dying, and then
Speaker 1: the guarantee of worms dying, uh made me quit fishing
Speaker 1: forever sticks because fish is fun. Fishing is fun. I
Speaker 1: love to fish, yeah, but I just don't do it anymore.
Speaker 1: All right, Well that's sad for you. Oh club fish
Speaker 1: like clubbing, but I won't actually use like a roden reel.
Speaker 1: Earthworms are segmented Josh, which is also very interesting. Uh.
Speaker 1: They are from the phylum Annelid, which means ringed worm.
Speaker 1: And there's about a hundred to a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: of these rings and they're each controlled separately little muscles,
Speaker 1: which is very important because they expand and contract to
Speaker 1: move their little slimy bodies forward. And they have these
Speaker 1: bristles at the front towards the head the anterior and
Speaker 1: um that are retractable. They're called settee, and um, they
Speaker 1: can just go big and dig into the dirt and
Speaker 1: hold the head in place while the rest of the
Speaker 1: body kind of contracts to get smaller to move forward
Speaker 1: like that. So these sete you go in and out
Speaker 1: depending on whether the heads moving or is it needs
Speaker 1: to be anchored so the rest of the body can
Speaker 1: catch up. And that's how they scoot along at sixty
Speaker 1: two per night for nightcrawlers. So um, pretty much, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I don't know what we're naming this one yet, but
Speaker 1: one of the one of them the suggestions you made
Speaker 1: was earthworms eating and pooping machines kind of like sharks,
Speaker 1: and I mean kind of um, but possibly even more
Speaker 1: beneficial than sharks. Sharks are like an apex predator. Right
Speaker 1: of course, earthworms are not an apex predator, but like
Speaker 1: I said, Aristotle call him the intestine of the soil.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why is because they just
Speaker 1: eat and eat and eat, and the stuff that they
Speaker 1: do eat they poop out. And it's actually what's crazy,
Speaker 1: remember the digestion um episode, So like the stuff that
Speaker 1: comes out of us, it's like nobody needs that. It's
Speaker 1: total waste with the worm, it's actually better than it
Speaker 1: was before. Warm poop is better than the food it eats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. That is pretty cool. And the way
Speaker 1: it eats is even cooler. I think. Um, they obviously
Speaker 1: eat and you're not gonna be able to tell a
Speaker 1: huge difference between the mouth end and the anus end
Speaker 1: unless you really dig your fingers in there. But at
Speaker 1: the mouth end, they're gonna they're gonna pass dirt and
Speaker 1: organic matter into their mouth and it's gonna go into
Speaker 1: an area called the crop where they store it for
Speaker 1: a little while, then into the gizzard. And this is
Speaker 1: the coolest part to me. In the gizzard, they have
Speaker 1: these tiny pebbles that they've already eaten, and those pebbles
Speaker 1: grind the food up even more like a little food
Speaker 1: processor to make it easier to pass through. That is
Speaker 1: so cool. And uh, in the intestinal walls, they they're
Speaker 1: aligned with blood vessels and sort of like our own
Speaker 1: blood vessels, they absorb and distribute nutrients. So it's not
Speaker 1: that much different than people. Yeah, no, it's not the
Speaker 1: thing about earthworms though, is the nutrients, especially nitrogen um,
Speaker 1: that they eat that they pass out is about of
Speaker 1: what was say, locked into a leaf, so they only
Speaker 1: keep like a order of the available nitrogen for themselves.
Speaker 1: But through digestion, what was once just locked into this
Speaker 1: leaf and was totally unusable to like a tree root,
Speaker 1: is now digested and broken up and available. It's called
Speaker 1: nitrogen fixing. And that's what worms do. They're casting their
Speaker 1: feces is broken down nitrogen, which is why people use
Speaker 1: worms for composting. That's exactly right there, the secret ingredient.
Speaker 1: While they're not secret but key ingredient to compost. But
Speaker 1: that's the that's the epigayic right. The ones that live
Speaker 1: above ground, the compost ones, the earthworms, like the annesic ones,
Speaker 1: they're big into composting two but they do it below ground.
Speaker 1: Um earthworm has five hearts. Kind of a neat fact
Speaker 1: right there. I would say aortic arches and uh I
Speaker 1: saw I think I saw in another photo like they
Speaker 1: have one of the main ones is that and then
Speaker 1: four other ones? Are they all equal? I think that
Speaker 1: they are. There's a main one, I believe, so you
Speaker 1: think I know you and chuck. The breathing through their
Speaker 1: skin is another cool trait. They don't have lungs, but
Speaker 1: they still need to breathe, so they just pass it
Speaker 1: passively through the skin inhaling and exhaling. There's no inhaler
Speaker 1: exhale because it just happens. But I call that an inhale.
Speaker 1: Even though when I was writing this, I had to
Speaker 1: go back. I was like, no, they're not inhaler. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: as long as their skin is coated in this mucus
Speaker 1: that they produced, that's how air exchanges is allowed to
Speaker 1: take place. Um. And if there's enough broken down available
Speaker 1: oxygen in a body of water, a worm can live
Speaker 1: in water. It can survive in water for a while
Speaker 1: because the air exchange is still taking place. They're just
Speaker 1: grabing oxygen. Yeah. Um. The problem is is when they
Speaker 1: encounter like really dry hot air like above ground. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we've all seen that sad, sad site. Right.
Speaker 1: So if you if you've ever seen like a worm
Speaker 1: that's curled up and is dry on the sidewalk that
Speaker 1: were suffocated to death because it wasn't able to breathe.
Speaker 1: That's mucus dried out. I couldn't breathe, you know, and
Speaker 1: all it needed to do is reach those leaves, but
Speaker 1: it failed on the sidewalk and that happens a lot
Speaker 1: in Georgia. Obviously you see a lot of those in
Speaker 1: the summertime. Uh. And to to make sure that they survive.
Speaker 1: They don't have eyes, so it's not like they can say, oh,
Speaker 1: the sun's out, but they're able to sense light through
Speaker 1: these photo sensitive cells on their skin that convert light
Speaker 1: into electrical impulses. So they feel this and say, hey,
Speaker 1: it's sunny out, I need to burrow down a little
Speaker 1: bit more. Yeah, pretty cool, yep. And this is why
Speaker 1: these buggers have survived for so long. It is. And um,
Speaker 1: that's also the role for their brain that their brain
Speaker 1: plays is to say, I'm sensing some light, so let's
Speaker 1: move down a little for there where there's not light.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much the extent of the worm brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I saw. They said, if you remove the brain,
Speaker 1: then you're hardly going to notice any change in behavior,
Speaker 1: except I guess they would dry up in the sun. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: So maybe that's what we've seen is brainless worms on sidewalks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or maybe they lost part of it. Someone remove their brains.
Speaker 1: We can go ahead and talk about that the regeneration. Okay,
Speaker 1: go ahead, because I need some explanation on that part.
Speaker 1: I get it a worm if if it's part of
Speaker 1: it is chopped off somehow, Um, they can regenerate uh
Speaker 1: more more towards the tail than the head. Is that right?
Speaker 1: So like that if you cut a worm in half,
Speaker 1: only one half is going to regenerate. Most likely it's
Speaker 1: the head end that they have an easier time regenerating
Speaker 1: their tail than they have their head. That makes sense. Um.
Speaker 1: The thing is is one of the joys of this
Speaker 1: is like anytime there's a question or something's vague, can
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, science really dropped the ball on earthworm
Speaker 1: research for a century. They there there's evidence that like
Speaker 1: and both sides can regenerate into two new worms. People
Speaker 1: have documented this supposedly, Um, there's like different, um, contrary
Speaker 1: evidence about how much could regenerate or how little, like
Speaker 1: how little of a segment you need to regenerate into
Speaker 1: a new worm. So there's a bunch of apparently there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of evidence out there that says like worms
Speaker 1: are spectacular regenerating and others are saying they're a little
Speaker 1: more limited than we think. Well, any kind of regeneration
Speaker 1: is pretty amazing if you ask me, Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: But if you want to make a bet with your friend,
Speaker 1: a very cruel friend who had just cut a worm
Speaker 1: directly in half, which end was going to regenerate, always
Speaker 1: put your money on the tail end. I could never
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just a little worm. I could never
Speaker 1: do that because they just squirmed so much like they're
Speaker 1: in horrible pain. You know. Yeah, have you read considered
Speaker 1: the lobster David Foster Wallace, like his his article for
Speaker 1: Gourmet magazine. Well, they sent him to like the Lobster Festival,
Speaker 1: and we were just expecting like a kind of a
Speaker 1: travel foodie article, and instead he went and did a
Speaker 1: bunch of research on whether or not lobsters feel pain
Speaker 1: because they're boiled to death. Yea, and definitely make noises
Speaker 1: to when that happened. They do. They scratch like the
Speaker 1: pot trying to get out. They do. But the key
Speaker 1: is is like, yes, surely they feel pain. Of course
Speaker 1: they feel pain. Um, they it's been shown that they
Speaker 1: have nerve receptors that you know, since pain, do they
Speaker 1: experience suffering? So that weren't squirming in in pain and
Speaker 1: suffering or just pain and really doesn't matter, I mean,
Speaker 1: and think inflicting pain on anything is cruel, but inflicting
Speaker 1: suffering is evil. Yeah. Yeah, I don't need a much lobster.
Speaker 1: Yeah you me um read that and was like, I'm
Speaker 1: never eating lobster again. I was like, I like a
Speaker 1: good lobster disk though I love lobster man. But there's
Speaker 1: another cool thing from this article. Did you know that
Speaker 1: until probably about the twentieth century, people considered lobster like
Speaker 1: sea insects. It was for like the the the poor,
Speaker 1: and the basically the lower classes. And there were actually
Speaker 1: laws apparently in New England about how many times a
Speaker 1: week you could feed patients in an insane asylum lobster
Speaker 1: because it was considered cruel. I believe that because from
Speaker 1: the research I've done, it's amazing that lobsters are considered
Speaker 1: some great thing now because they're kind of bottom feeding.
Speaker 1: I think they're liking to spiders as close to anything,
Speaker 1: and they'll like cannibalize one another. They're just like really crazy, boy,
Speaker 1: you dip it in that drawn butter. I know it's tough.
Speaker 1: I can kiss lobsters goodbye too. All right, so let's
Speaker 1: talk about reproduction. I can handle this first part, but
Speaker 1: I did get confused when it comes to the clitellum fertilization.
Speaker 1: So so you know, like the band on an earthworm. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the first part first. Okay, earthworm reproduction
Speaker 1: you wanted. This is the fact for me. They're simultaneous
Speaker 1: from aphrodites, all of them. Yeah. I remember that grouper
Speaker 1: that was in the tank when we swam with the
Speaker 1: whale sharks. Do I that's called a sequential hermaphrodite, where
Speaker 1: like at some point during that grouper's life it changes
Speaker 1: sex right um, with simultaneous from aphrodites, they have both
Speaker 1: reproductive organs of male and female for their whole lives,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool and another great reason why they
Speaker 1: have hung around in such vast numbers forever. So what
Speaker 1: they do if they want to make love is, uh,
Speaker 1: they do a little New Hampshire Vermont action and line
Speaker 1: up opposite head to tail. They excrete all that mucus
Speaker 1: that we were talking about. They excrete so much of
Speaker 1: that that they form a little mucous tube that they
Speaker 1: both get in or they're in. I guess that they
Speaker 1: used to like rub against one another. Well, the trick
Speaker 1: is though there encased in this too bright So when
Speaker 1: they release their semen. It's just rubs around until it
Speaker 1: finds the semen receptacle right of the other worm. Well obviously, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that's exactly right. They rub on one another
Speaker 1: with their slime tubes and their semens all over their
Speaker 1: slime tubes and then yeah that they that's how they
Speaker 1: exchange seminal fluid. So I get all that, but this
Speaker 1: next part confuses me a little, and I might suggest
Speaker 1: you rewrite it to make it a little easier really
Speaker 1: before you publish. Well, I this is this is unedited,
Speaker 1: so I need to go through it. But um, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll see if I can explain it. And this has
Speaker 1: taken um largely from a guy named I think his
Speaker 1: name is Jim Conrad. He wrote some pretty good, interesting
Speaker 1: and very well written books on earthworms, so it's probably
Speaker 1: trying not to paraphrase or plagiarized him, which is why
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I'll just make it more confusing than he. Um. Basically,
Speaker 1: you know the band on the earthworm like saying like Cowler,
Speaker 1: that thick the thickest band, that's the cli tellum. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and uh but in like three or four segments, why
Speaker 1: but it's just one segment. So the cli tellum is
Speaker 1: responsible for creating another band of mucus as slime tube, right,
Speaker 1: and what that does That carries the eggs. It moves
Speaker 1: over the earthworm, It moves over the place where the
Speaker 1: eggs are stored, attaches the eggs to the slime tube um.
Speaker 1: The slime tube then keeps moving forward across the seminal
Speaker 1: receptacle where the other worm sperm is now deposited. So
Speaker 1: as the slime tube with the eggs attach move over
Speaker 1: the seminar receptacle, the eggs become fertilized by the other
Speaker 1: worm sperm. That slime tube from the cli tellum keeps
Speaker 1: going over the head. And as the worm as it
Speaker 1: passes all the way over the worm's head, it closes
Speaker 1: off because it's mucus and forms a cocoon. And now
Speaker 1: inside that cocoon are fertilized war egs fo to roughly
Speaker 1: for like a nightcrawler. It's about four twenty, could be
Speaker 1: as little as one twenties the highest I've seen um.
Speaker 1: And then there's little baby wear mags in there that
Speaker 1: are now fertilized that we'll sit there for like um.
Speaker 1: I can't remember how many weeks two to three weeks, okay,
Speaker 1: and then you get a little newborn babies and they
Speaker 1: can do this every seven to ten days. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is yet another reason why they're abundant and surviving well.
Speaker 1: Then the other the other point is both worms that
Speaker 1: are in this mating process can become pregnant or can
Speaker 1: lay a fertilized cocoon. So there is no such thing
Speaker 1: as just a male worm or a female orthorm. They're both.
Speaker 1: They're hermaphroditic. That's pretty awesome. Um, really, that's not the
Speaker 1: thing come across in this paragraph. Uh, I was slightly confused.
Speaker 1: I'll rewrite it then, just slightly. Uh, you have to
Speaker 1: do it now. I need to make a note to Okay, Uh,
Speaker 1: their life expectancy, it's pretty impressive to a nightcrawler can
Speaker 1: live up to twenty years but generally live about six
Speaker 1: to nine, which is man, that is a long time
Speaker 1: when you're talking about little tiny things that live underfoot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, compared to like an insect. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Red wigglers two to five years, gray worms
Speaker 1: between one point to five and two point six years.
Speaker 1: Very specific, Well done. That's a mitaki who who came
Speaker 1: up with that one. So that's a long time even
Speaker 1: for the lowly ugly gray worm. Two and two and
Speaker 1: a half years is pretty pretty good. Yeah. And they
Speaker 1: actually they have this thing called estivation, which is a
Speaker 1: form of hibernation. Yeah. I thought that was really cool too. Um,
Speaker 1: it's actually more efficient than hibernation, and hibernation like you
Speaker 1: like a bear that's sleeping, they have to gorge themselves
Speaker 1: before they hibernate because they're going to be their their
Speaker 1: metabolic processes are still operating, so they're still using up
Speaker 1: fat stores and food stores. With estivation, it's pretty much
Speaker 1: as close to death as you can come, Like almost
Speaker 1: all of your body processes just stop, and he's curl
Speaker 1: up in a little wormy ball, right, Yeah, to keep
Speaker 1: their mucus supply abundant. So that's the only thing they're doing,
Speaker 1: is creating mucus moist Yeah. And the reason they're doing
Speaker 1: this is because worms definitely have like preferences for like
Speaker 1: the temperature um and the conditions on the ground the moisture,
Speaker 1: and when things just don't meet their liking, they estivate.
Speaker 1: So you can imagine that during the ice age, a
Speaker 1: lot of worms estivated and died because it didn't get
Speaker 1: any better for ten thou years. Well, when they they're
Speaker 1: cold blooded, but when they freeze, they die. Um, you're
Speaker 1: talking about their preferences between fifty and humidity, which is
Speaker 1: why Georgia has lots of worms. Between fifty nine and
Speaker 1: eighty six degree fahrenheit is about what they like. They
Speaker 1: can survive, but they're not gonna be as active and
Speaker 1: thrive and outside this conditions, right, that's like when their
Speaker 1: most active is between those and Um, they will eat
Speaker 1: any kind of organic matter. This decaying. But this is
Speaker 1: kind of cool. They found out they actually like certain
Speaker 1: stuff more than others, which is neto. And the way
Speaker 1: I read it was because they like the taste, or
Speaker 1: at least that's how I anthropomorpial anthropomorphs species. Uh. In
Speaker 1: Washington State they prefer maple over oak, and right here
Speaker 1: in Georgia they prefer clover over grass. That's pretty neat.
Speaker 1: I got lots of clover in my yard too. They'll
Speaker 1: eat the tar out of that stuff, especially if you
Speaker 1: tons of worms. If you pulled it and buried it,
Speaker 1: it would be gone like that. I wonder how they
Speaker 1: do in the clay here. They do very well as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, that they are the reason why,
Speaker 1: well there one reason why any water can perk late
Speaker 1: through the clay. But man I had clay in my
Speaker 1: backyard that like was impenetrable. It seemed like worms can.
Speaker 1: Worms can penetrate it really to a certain extent. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: the one of the so pretty much what Darwin came
Speaker 1: up with is that earthworms are extraordinarily helpful. Um, And
Speaker 1: we'll talk about in a minute, like scientists have come
Speaker 1: to realize like okay, well there's still an invasive species
Speaker 1: and as a result, like they it's not all beneficial.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about the helpfulness first. One of them
Speaker 1: is basically burrowing down through dense clay, dense soils and
Speaker 1: creating places called biopores macro pores basically holes in the
Speaker 1: ground underneath the ground that let water percolate down to
Speaker 1: prevent flooding above ground, which also filters that water it
Speaker 1: does as it goes down to the like the water table.
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah, Um, it allows roots to grow more easily,
Speaker 1: aration plants aerates. Yeah, it brings oxygen down. It basically
Speaker 1: makes soil more usable for the stuff above ground. Well,
Speaker 1: they're just basically little tilling machines. They're moving the earth
Speaker 1: under there, so you don't have to write. We talked
Speaker 1: about nitrogen fixing with their castings, where they take about
Speaker 1: casting poop. Is that right, that's that's a nice word
Speaker 1: for their poop. Worm castings. Um, And apparently Darwin calculated
Speaker 1: it in ten years, ten years worth of worm castings
Speaker 1: would cover an acre of of land about two inches thick.
Speaker 1: So if you took all the worm castings produced by
Speaker 1: a group of worms in an acre in ten years,
Speaker 1: you have two inches of worm casting. And they and
Speaker 1: like you said earlier, I think they only take about
Speaker 1: of the nitrogen for themselves. They're like world, you can
Speaker 1: have the other seventy and again it's it's any usable
Speaker 1: form now as a nutrient. Pretty awesome, yeah, um, but
Speaker 1: it's not all good. No, it's not all good because
Speaker 1: they eat too well and they are an invasive species.
Speaker 1: So because they consume, uh, what do you have here,
Speaker 1: nine thousand, two hundred and forty pounds or of organic
Speaker 1: litter for every hectare in eleven weeks. That's too much.
Speaker 1: Because spiders and lizards and arthropods and snails and frogs
Speaker 1: and slugs and everything else living down there needs that
Speaker 1: stuff as well. That's their home, but the worms are
Speaker 1: taking it for themselves and they give back they well,
Speaker 1: they definitely do like nitrogen, right, but they're taken too much.
Speaker 1: So um. There also that there's that litter horizon, that
Speaker 1: layer of layer of leaves right above the soil um.
Speaker 1: There's this the layer that's closest to the soil surface.
Speaker 1: Um that's at the bottom of this leaf layer is
Speaker 1: called duff. It's like the sponge, dark organic material that
Speaker 1: is actually a nice little place for a seed to
Speaker 1: safely just state. So without that duff, without it being
Speaker 1: there long enough for a seed to start to germanate
Speaker 1: sorry not just eight but german ate um understory plants
Speaker 1: like smaller plants, saplings, plants that aren't gonna grow as
Speaker 1: big as trees in a woodland um are they have
Speaker 1: trouble taking hold. And actually you can see photos side
Speaker 1: by side on the Internet of like without worms with worms,
Speaker 1: and like the difference is like just this waste land.
Speaker 1: Like with worms, it's missing all sorts of little plants
Speaker 1: that you see should be there but aren't because the
Speaker 1: worms are eating their habitat. Actually, like it can reduce
Speaker 1: the understory canopy between like twenty five and the presence
Speaker 1: of earthworms can because they eat so much so fast
Speaker 1: that not enough leaf litters falling to keep the worms
Speaker 1: happy and a seedlings to grow or keep a place
Speaker 1: for spiders to live, that kind of thing. Well, and
Speaker 1: not just spiders, But that works this way all the
Speaker 1: way up to chain, because you're gonna have mammals, larger
Speaker 1: mammals that are gonna want to eat vegetables and leaves,
Speaker 1: and if they're not there, then they're gonna be in trouble,
Speaker 1: and then we're in trouble. Yeah, what about the deer?
Speaker 1: Where are we gonna go without deer? I go to
Speaker 1: the chicken the section of my grocery store. Everything works out.
Speaker 1: You eat chicken instead of deer. I don't need I
Speaker 1: don't needt deer. I don't I mean against it. I
Speaker 1: just don't come upon it that much. Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to go to like one of those um processing places
Speaker 1: out in the country. They always have like deer for sale.
Speaker 1: They are also contributing to global warming in a way
Speaker 1: because they are admitting a lots of carbon as they
Speaker 1: they go through all this organic matter that's gonna some
Speaker 1: of some of the carbon is gonna be released there
Speaker 1: or some of us going to be released as carbon.
Speaker 1: And they have a stat here from Colgate University twenty
Speaker 1: what are they New York toothbrushis um They contribute as
Speaker 1: much as an additional of carbon released from the soil,
Speaker 1: So that's substantial. But there are other studies that show
Speaker 1: that actually depending on where you are, Like, uh, that
Speaker 1: Colgate was a North American study, they found that like
Speaker 1: in Malaysia or Vietnam, like, they're actually better. They actually
Speaker 1: locked carbon into the soil. So it really depends on
Speaker 1: where they are. But they're not an invasive species in
Speaker 1: that study in Vietnam they were native. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, they do a lot more good
Speaker 1: here in North America than bad. Right, probably depending on
Speaker 1: whether you're a spider or a small shrub that lives
Speaker 1: in the woodland. What if you're human? If you're a human, yeah,
Speaker 1: you love the worm. Yeah. I have a couple of
Speaker 1: additional little fat X. The biggest worm. I know you've
Speaker 1: found some in Japan, but the Australian Jipsland earthworm I
Speaker 1: saw twelve feet long, two pounds. Wow, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of worm. And what was the japan one? Was that
Speaker 1: just another giant earthworm? There's just a bunch of like
Speaker 1: I think, because Japan has been a culture for so long,
Speaker 1: there's just been a lot of reports on record of
Speaker 1: giant earthworms found by farmers, so they had a lot
Speaker 1: of stories. It's worth googling giant earthworms because people have
Speaker 1: these things wrapped around their neck and stuff, and it's
Speaker 1: just this big, mindless worm. Like, No, they're not aggressive
Speaker 1: like they're depicted in tremors, but they're still like, uh,
Speaker 1: they can eat their weight every day. I saw that.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. They are able to move forwards
Speaker 1: and backwards, but they like moving forwards. Yeah, okay, and
Speaker 1: I didn't know this. If the soil dries up, some
Speaker 1: of them can actually lose their cletellum, but once they
Speaker 1: get moist again, it can come back. So that's another
Speaker 1: survival adaptation. I guess. It's very cool. Pretty cool. So
Speaker 1: you got anything else? Do you ever eat them? How
Speaker 1: to eat fried worms? I never did. I don't think
Speaker 1: if I did, I've blocked it out of my memory
Speaker 1: because I don't recall eating. Or if I haven't, it
Speaker 1: wasn't they weren't it wouldn't have been fried. It would
Speaker 1: have been like somebody who was like, youre eat this right, yeah?
Speaker 1: Worm sushi? Yeah, but no I haven't. That was a
Speaker 1: great book, though, Did you read that? Sure? Oh? Sure? Classic?
Speaker 1: Wasn't it like Judy Bloom? No? It was. I think
Speaker 1: it was written by a man and they made a
Speaker 1: movie about it. I never saw them. I didn't either.
Speaker 1: There's no way I was gonna spoil that childhood memory.
Speaker 1: It's a good thing and check. All right, Well, if
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about earthworms, probably wait a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks and then go see the edited published version,
Speaker 1: the better version that includes the fact that they can
Speaker 1: move forward and backwards about earthworms. Just type in earth
Speaker 1: forms in a couple of weeks at the search bar
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. And I said search bar,
Speaker 1: which means it's time for listener mail. That's right, Josh.
Speaker 1: This is an email before we do the email that
Speaker 1: we have a a quick announcement. We get messages from
Speaker 1: our fans from time to time around the holidays that
Speaker 1: are suffering in some form or another. Because although the
Speaker 1: holidays are a great time of the year for for
Speaker 1: most folks, sometimes it's a very sad time of year
Speaker 1: for others, and uh, we just want to say generally
Speaker 1: that we're thinking about you guys. Every time we get
Speaker 1: one of these emails, we reply and it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's very sad and we wish it was more we
Speaker 1: could do. But we were thinking about either in the holidays,
Speaker 1: and we hope everyone out there and this stuff you
Speaker 1: should know Army is uh is hanging in there. Check.
Speaker 1: That was very nice of you know. So onto the email,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this sharpa overdue sharp at email from
Speaker 1: graces Hey, guys and Jerry using it as a collective,
Speaker 1: she points out. I know this is a while back,
Speaker 1: but I actually met a sherpa. He's a kid who
Speaker 1: went to my school for a little while, and he
Speaker 1: was totally cool with me asking him a thousand and
Speaker 1: one questions. He thought it was cool that I knew
Speaker 1: some information, and when I told him about your podcast episode,
Speaker 1: he wanted to listen to some of it. But before
Speaker 1: I give you his feedback, here's his story. Until he
Speaker 1: was five, he lived in a village near Mount Everest,
Speaker 1: but not so close that he ever got a good
Speaker 1: look at it. I couldn't imagine he was that near,
Speaker 1: And then I would think you have to be really
Speaker 1: really near it to not get a good look at Oh,
Speaker 1: maybe that was the case. He was so close it
Speaker 1: was just like a wall, a wall of rock. Uh.
Speaker 1: And she says, even if he did get a good
Speaker 1: look at it, he was only five, so he may
Speaker 1: not remember it. He had to leave his village though,
Speaker 1: because they were threatened by the maoists, so he moved
Speaker 1: to a city as a refugee. Uh. And he lived
Speaker 1: there until last year. From what I understand, they were
Speaker 1: still under the threat from malice, so they came to
Speaker 1: America as a refugee. Ill Um. Here's his little additional
Speaker 1: effects as the plural of Sherpa is Sherpa's So we
Speaker 1: were right cool. You pronounced the region Solu Kumbo correctly,
Speaker 1: and he was very excited about that. And he said,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of potatoes. Now, remember we they
Speaker 1: started growing potatoes at a certain point and that's the
Speaker 1: bumper crop. I guess. So that's all he heard of
Speaker 1: the podcast, only about five minutes of it. He didn't uh.
Speaker 1: Grace didn't want to make him listen to the whole
Speaker 1: thing because she felt like he already knew most of
Speaker 1: the stuff and she didn't want him for him, so uh,
Speaker 1: he was excited about it. She was excited about it,
Speaker 1: and she just wants to say thanks for reading this
Speaker 1: on the year, and that is from Grace. Thanks a lot, Greig.
Speaker 1: Thank you to your Sherpa friend too for supporting us.
Speaker 1: And welcome to America, Sherpa boy, and good luck here.
Speaker 1: Um wow, Chuck here just spreading glad tidings all over
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