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Worms

The big question is Why? As in, why bother with worms? They're slimy, not too friendly and they don't learn tricks. But they DO do some pretty great things. Like make the soil perfect for growing... all the plants in the world. It just wouldn't work as well without worms.

Worms also are great decomposers. They take stuff we throw out, like coffee, old leaves, and newspapers and turn it into soil.

Make your own wormery and get a close look at these squirmers:

1. Make a worm, dirt, garbage, sand layer cake and take an old garbage can and put some soil in the bottom half.

2. Carefully place some worms and cover them up with about 3 inches of dirt.

3. Pile on a bit of coffee grounds, some torn up paper and some more dirt.

4. Water the whole thing until the soil on top is moist.

5. Cover the can and keep it in a cool, dark place.

Your worms will make soil out of your trash. You can keep this going by adding more paper, grounds and water.

BODY PARTS

Wendell the Worm, Ace Reporter here with the inside story on the great creatures known as worms. Let's follow a leaf through my body to see how I eat and digest it. Earthworms have mouths, we can even open them wide to fit leaves and other good things. But we don't have teeth! Here is what happened to my lunch:

Pharynx: I push my pharynx or throat out of my mouth to grab leaves and to pull them back into my mouth. Then I get them nice and wet with my saliva. Esophagus: Once I have my food good and wet, I push it down my esophagus, then onto my crop. Crop: My crop is a storage compartment for my food and other things I swallow. From the crop, my lunch goes to my gizzard. Gizzard: My gizzard is where the work happens. I use any stones that I've swallowed and the strong muscles of my gizzard to grind up the leaves. These muscles work almost like teeth. Intestine: Once I have the leaves all ground up they move to my intestine where the digestive juices break them down even more. Bloodstream: Now that the leaf is all digested, some of it will pass into my bloodstream. Anus: Whatever is leftover comes out my anus as castings or worm poop.

Eddie, what do you want to say to the folks at home today?

Eddie: Wendell, we worms don't get no respect. So what if we're slimy? Our mucous keeps us moist -- so we can breathe through our skin! So what if we eat leaves and dirt -- that's our hamburger and fries! Does that give people the right to call us yucky? OR to scream when they see us?

WHAT WORMS DO

Why do people call us the "lowly" worm? We've been around for 120 million years. In the time of the Egyptian Pharoahs, Cleopatra said we were sacred. That Greek Aristotle called us "the intestines" of the soil. The scientist Charles Darwin studied us for 39 years in the last century! Do you know why? Darwin said, "It may be doubted whether there are many other animals in the world which have played so important a part in the history of the world...."

We're underground farmers who turn the soil over like a plough. In just one acre there can be a million or more of us, eating 10 tons of leaves, stems, and dead roots a year and turning over 40 tons of soil. Imagine us all over the world -- billions and billions of earthworms, tunnelling through soil, chewing up fallen leaves and animal remains, pushing heavy stones. And don't forget pooping! Our poop, called castings, contains the recycled nutrients from the debris we ate. Our tunnels add air and our poop fertilizer. We change the dirt under human's feet!

We worms face possible death or mutilation every step of the way. You can only imagine what we go through every day dodging bird beaks, garden forks and stabbing fish hooks. And moles? Don't get me started? They eat three times their weight every day. Shrews? They're even worse! They have to eat every hour. Know what one of their favorite foods is? Us!!! No wonder the majority of us probably don't make it much past a year! Worms, we don't get no respect!

Wendell: Eddie, who's that big guy crawling across the road towards us?

Eddie: Oh, he's Espinal, my Latin cousin. He just crawled in from Ecuador to escape the humidity. He's big, but I'm afraid he's very shy.

Wendell: Your cousin is huge!

Eddie: Yep. He's over 2metres long, 2cm in diameter and weighs over a pound. They grow earthworms big in South American for sure!

WORMS MAKE NUTRIENTS

Without the help of worms, every plant and animal that died and fell to the ground would stay right where it fell. Trees, leaves, fruit, nuts, dead animals and food would just keep piling up (you'd be living underground like us!).

But worms and other decomposers break down all this refuge. All those trees and leaves becomes rich soil for new seedlings to grow. And the cycle starts all over again!

The Decomposers break things down into valuable nutrients that can be used by other plants and animals. Start with a old dead log or fallen leaves and you end up with rich soil for new seedlings to grow.