mostly nonfiction and bakersfield news | June 30th, 2009
Squirmy Wormy Suicide
Why do worms commit squirmy wormy suicide when it rains or when sprinklers turn on?
In Bakersfield, Calif., the temperatures have been soaring to a scorching 110 degrees. It’s barely July. Yet, this isn’t the desert. It just feels like one. Bakersfield is still a town with manicured lawns surrounding houses, apartments and businesses.
The soil is actually very rich, and very worm-filled, which is why California’s Central Valley is one of the major breadbaskets of the world, with agricultural landscapes stretching for hundreds of miles.
And in the urban areas? There’s lots of sidewalks. And on those, lot of dead worms. So why do worms leave their burrows when the ground is wet, squirm onto nearby sidewalks, and fry?
According to a University of Wisconsin-Madison news report, one must understand that the slithery invertebrates breathe through their skin. They have no actual lungs.
Teri Balser, an associate professor of soil and ecosystem ecology at UW-Madison, said that O2 from the air or water passes directly from their outer cuticle into wormy blood vessels (Don’t you wish you could do that?) She added that normally, soil has a mix air and water. “Oxygen diffuses easily through air, and the soil stays aerobic because oxygen comes in from the surface,” she said.
But after a rain, or a nice watering of a lawn, the soil pores and the worm burrows get filled with water. Balser said O2 diffuses about a thousand times slower through water than through air. “The worms can’t get enough oxygen when the soil is flooded, so they come to the surface to breathe.” She then said that worms get confused and can’t find their burrows.
Matt Ransford of Popular Science backed the oxygen deprivation claim in a 2008 article. He wrote that generally earthworms “are loathe to come to the surface as they rapidly lose moisture when exposed to UV rays.” Yes, worms need to have moist skin in order to breathe. Ransford added that worms have to come to the surface to breathe just like people do when we’re swimming.
Yet as a contradiction, some worms can live in water for days or even months.
So then are the worms coming out of their burrows to breed, but instead get shriveled up on summer sidewalks? Doubtful.
Charles Darwin simply thought worms were sick and didn’t take into account that air gets trapped beneath the ground. In 1881 he wrote in The formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms: “I believe that they were already sick, and that their deaths were merely hastened by the ground being flooded.”
Darwin may have been partially correct in wondering why earthworms come out of their burrows, because it seems that many worms stay in the ground during rains or watering of lawns. But then, that could simply have to do with how porous the ground particularly is, how deep water reaches, and even the type of worm and how a particular species processes oxygen.
Southwest Bakersfield sidewalk…
Aren’t you glad you’re not a worm?
All in a worm’s day…
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They look like 4th of July snakes
Worms in the Burbs