Watch Where You Step: Earthworms Beneath Your Feet

Fishermen Love 'Em!

The earthworm is a common creature that lives under the soil. Their oft-common names include ”rain worm”, “night crawler”, dew-worm” and “angleworm,” the latter owing to its common use as fishing (angling) bait.

The body of the earthworm is basically a muscular system in the form of a tube, which houses the digestive system on the inside as another tube running the entire length. Earthworms have two main blood vessels that extend the length of the creature, with several aortic arches, -‘hearts’ basically. The number of aortic arches varies in different species of earthworms, but a common earthworm typically has five hearts.

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All earthworms take food in a unique manner; their mouths are directly connected to their digestive tract with just a small crop (storage chamber) to help grind the consumed food to a more digestible slurry. They merely swallow their food and it passes directly into the digestive system. Earthworms mostly eat decomposing matter such as leaves, plant clipping and other plant material. Other varieties of worms are more 'geophagous.' That is, they eat soil or earthy loam-like dirt in a manner similar to “pica” in order to obtain nutrients. “Pica” is generally classified as an eating disorder in advanced animals, defined as a craving for and ingestion of non-food items.

What Do Earthworms Do?

Earthworms improve soil quality by their tunneling and removal of decaying matter from the surface. Aeration of the soil and their tunneling improve soil quality and rain penetration. This tunneling reduces erosion as the rainwater can soak into the rooting levels of plants instead of merely running-off, carrying topsoil away with it. Plant roots can more easily propagate through soils previous burrowed by worms, thus allowing plants to infiltrate new territory quicker than surface-level propagation. Soil that has been worked by earthworms has a more stable ‘crumb-like’ quality, also making it less likely to just blow away in wind erosion as well.

Material cycling is an important function of earthworms; for instance, they remove waste that is spread upon the surface of fields. As a normal process of waste removal in some municipalities, earthworms move this product that is spread upon fields to deep underground to be used by trees and plants.. –Liquefied sludge slurry from Waste Treatment Facilities in some municipalities is sprayed upon farmer’s fields and earthworms do the chore of getting it buried. Days or weeks later, this process can be repeated. The Waste Treatment Facility benefits are it removes heavy bottom-sludge from their collecting ponds, and the farmer benefits as this is good fertilizer for their fields.

Life would be radically different here on the planet if it weren’t for these very useful and mostly unseen creatures!

Are Earthworms All Good and Beneficial?

For the most part, yes. Earthworms are a sign of healthy soil. A soil devoid of earthworms tends to mean that the soil is bad, overly acidic or heavily polluted.

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The Good, The Bad and The So-So

Some earthworms have a few bad qualities. Introduced species of earthworms can compete with local indigenous species. Most introduced species here came from Europe for whatever reasons, probably foreigners wishing for familiar creatures in their new chosen land. In western Canada for instance, a type of introduced earthworm deposits hardpan clay-rich soils from deep underground to the surface, which makes managing gardens, golf courses and personal lawns troublesome. The indigenous specie of worms do not do this, as they don't tunnel as deep. The local worms are more beneficial for that region than the invasive newcomers.

Other earthworms, like the Red Worm (Eisenia fetida), coexist with indigenous worms and even thrive in soils that are too acidic for other native species of earthworms, like decomposing manure piles. Red Worms are not as long as the common earthworm, and they can withstand a greater range of temperatures along with short-term drier conditions. They can be kept alive for quite some time in smaller ‘bait boxes’ while using them as bait for fishing. They are more ‘energetic‘ on the fisherman’s fishhook. They continue to wiggle for a longer period of time than do normal worms, making them a favorite with fishermen. Fish seem to strike faster and harder on an 'active wiggler.' Able to withstand a greater range of temperature favors Red Worms for raising then in breeder boxes both indoors as well as outdoors. Avid fishermen, reptile and amphibian hobbyists often raise their own Red Worms to supplement their sport, avocation or their pet’s diet.

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Worldwide, there are over three thousand species of earthworms, but only a small number of species are indigenous to Ontario, CANADA where yours truly currently lives. Hermaphrodites, -it can be said that earthworms really only have one gender. But it still requires two worms to mate as there is an exchange of gametes. They are egg layers, which are cast-off in cocoons that form in a skin sac that forms around their bodies. When it is ready to be shed, they ‘back out of’ the subsequent ring cocoon, which is shaped a little bit like a lemon. The baby worms are born fully developed and ready to begin their life.