Moles can eat their own weight in worms each day. But they’re no match for human worm grunters—also known as worm snorers, fiddlers, or charmers— who can collect thousands of worms each day, selling them for bait. Worm grunting involves thrusting a stick into the soil and rubbing it with a piece of steel to generate vibrations that send earthworms fleeing to the surface. It’s quite popular in the southeastern
In Catania’s paper on this topic, he gives props to Darwin, who made the same hypothesis more than a century ago. “It is often said that if the ground is beaten or otherwise made to tremble worms will believe that they are pursued by a mole and leave their burrows,”
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Image: flickr/ Dodo-Bird
October 14th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Personally, I want to meet the guy that got to stand around yelling at worms.
October 16th, 2008 at 9:03 am
So Darwin was this super genius?
NOT!
If Darwin correctly identified the mole phenomenon with worms it wasn’t because of any scientific abilities. My friend, it was because he was a worm! Only a worm would resurrect an ancient pagan religious belief about origins like evolution, and masquerade it as a scientific theory, and only worms like you would buy into it.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Ironic your name would be Sasquatch - I’ll bet you believe in a cornucopia of imaginary creatures.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Sasquatch… Sigh… Never mind. You wouldn’t understand anyway…
October 16th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
this is fake
October 16th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
this is a fake article, made up. cant believe this stupid shit
October 16th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
fake and falsified news article.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Fabio… Are you seriously questioning the veracity of Discover Magazine’s reputation? Why don’t you call the Chamber of Commerce in Sopchoppy, Florida and ask them about their annual “Worm Gruntin’ Festival”? Are you an IDiot like Sasquatch? Do you EVER think before you open your mouth? By the way - veracity means: Conformity to truth or fact; accuracy.
October 17th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Re: Sasquatch
By “ancient pagan religious belief,” you mean having a creation story, right? Why don’t you think of 3 religions and tell me if any of them exclude a creation story. Remember Genesis 1 and 2?
So what’s your point? (And yes, that’s a rhetorical question.)
October 19th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Is that why worms surface when it’s raining?
October 19th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Re: kris
Good question! That was also a popular hypothesis, but they tested the effects of rain and found that it didn’t produce the same effect. From the press release:
“But the more definitive test of rain was to construct a large outdoor bin, fill it with 300 worms, and wait for thunderstorms. Even in very heavy downpours, only 1-2 worms came out in an hour. That seemed to rule out the hypothesis that worm grunting mimics the sound of rainfall.”
October 31st, 2008 at 5:08 pm
@Sasquatch
In other news, the earth is flat, and the sun revolves around it. And thunder means g-d is angry.
…
You idiot.