25 Amazing and Interesting Facts about Earthworms | Amazing Facts 4U
- Fossilized worms, similar to earthworms, have been found in rocks laid down 600 million years ago.
- Earthworms exist in about 6,000 species worldwide.
- Over a million earthworms can be found in every single acre of land.
- Earthworms consume about 1/2 to 1 time its body weight per day.
- Earthworms have no ears or eyes. They also don’t have any bones or skeletons.
- Most worms will live between 1 and 2 years. However, they can live as long as up to 8 years.
- The length of an earthworm varies among species, ranging from less than half an inch to nearly 14 feet long. The largest earthworm found in 1967 measured 22 feet long.
- The earthworm has a tremendous contribution to soil fertility. They tunnel through the ground, eating their way through the soil. They also drag leaves and other plant debris down into the soil, which allows air to enter it and water to drain through making rich, fertile soils from dense, infertile clays.
- Amazingly the earthworm eats the soil. It crunches it up in its muscular stomach, digests what it can and ejects the rest.
- Earthworms cast from one square metre of meadow were weighed over one year. It was found that they brought about 8 kg of soil to the surface in an year.
- As they lack lungs or other specialized respiratory organs, earthworms breathe through their skin.
- Earthworms have red blood, just like humans. Worms are cold blooded and can have between 1 and 5 pairs of hearts.
- Earthworms are 90% water compared to 75 % water in us.
- The earthworm exudes a lubricating fluid that makes moving through underground burrows easier and helps keep skin moist. One Australian species can shoot fluid as far as one feet through skin pores.
- The earthworm body is basically like a tube of muscle arranged in two layers horizontally and vertically. Tightening the horizontal muscles forces the worm’s head forward. A wave of contractions then passes back down the body, squeezing more of the worm forward until the long muscles take over to pull up the tail. Worms can crawl both backward and forward in the soil.
- The Earthworms body is bristling with sense organs , as many as 1,900 on just one segment. These receptors give the worm a sense of touch, the capacity to taste, and the ability to detect light.
- The thin-skinned earthworm has no resistance to the sun’s ultra-violet radiation, so daylight for an hour can be fatal to them. Earthworms will anchor their tail in its burrow and at any sudden noise it will slither back into the earth.
- Earthworms are hermaphrodites i.e. They have both male and female sex organs. Amazingly they cannot fertilize themselves as they they need to mate with another worm to exchange genetic material.
- Earthworms are attracted to one another by scent. Their mating ritual involves the two worms lying head-to-tail on the surface of the soil and exchange sperm while bound together in a mucus covering.
- Earthworms can contain up to 20 eggs which are sealed up to form a cocoon which can survive extreme conditions.
- Baby worms hatch from cocoons smaller than a grain of rice. Usually only one worm emerges from it.
- In favorable conditions, worms breed every seven to ten days and can double their population in 90 days.
- The eggs can stay dormant in soil or compost for up to 15 years, waiting for conditions like moisture and food to be good enough to support their life.
- The earthworm falls prey to most animals and birds, but the mole is its main predator , A mole can eat up to 50 earthworms in one day.
- If an earthworm loses one end of its body it may grow a replacement, however, if it is cut in half, it dies.
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