Giant earthworms

Forgetomori has a nice photo gallery of giant earthworms. I'm not sure if they are real or not.

The worms in the images all look they are up to a meter in length, compatible with the recorded dimensions for the many species of the families we discussed. They are probably real, though exactly from where and what species my ordinary investigation didn’t come up with. Specialists, do enlighten us with further confirmation and identification! The first image of a girl holding up one, for instance, may not be of an earthworm but of a caecilian.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Takuan

Caecilian, you’re breaking my heart…
pecoto

Earthworms are awesome! I want one of these to wear around like a pet snake.
Anonymous

Please, please don’t let the Japanese find out about this.
Anonymous

@Kappakahi LOL, nice reference!
echolocate chocolate

Awww, they’re adorable.
frogmarch

@29: Your comment about tentacles threw me for a moment, because I used to have a cecilian in my freshwater aquarium, and I never saw anything that I would describe as a “tentacle”. But they do indeed have this (apparently unique) pair of olfactory organs that are retractable. “Retractable tentacles” sounds a lot more squidgy and freaky than what they actually look like:

http://www.gymnophiona.org/morphology/
See figs. 7 and 9.

But if you want creepy, here goes. The reason I speak about my cecilian in the past tense is because one night it escaped its tank through a small gap at the back of the aquarium hood…and disappeared. This is an 18-inch long, fat purple-grey toothy carnivorous worm (amphibian, actually), blind and not well adapted for moving about on land, and it somehow managed to get away and hide. I tore the house apart looking for it, and never found it. My wife tiptoed around the house for *weeks*, always turning on lights before entering a room, and shaking out the sheets before going to bed. Even a couple of years later, when we moved out, I expected to find dessicated remains under the fridge or something, but found no trace.

I can only hypothesize that our cat ate it. And he’s not telling.
InsertFingerHere

I’ve seen one of those before at a fetish club…
Phikus

Do they come in giant cans, or is that just a figure of speech? ;D
monkeygirl

Wow! I wish I had one of these for my compost heap. Talk about vermiculture!
Snig

The pictures either prove the existance of giant earthworms, or of tiny hobbit folk in modern dress who like to prank the big folk.
airship

I could swear I see the pixels…
Brainspore

Worms, okay. But I’m not entirely convinced those things are from Earth.
harpdevil

They’re mutations caused by radiation. No, wait; the government made ‘em. *Big* surprise for the Russians.

Boing Boing reader should be advised, however, that there are two more, repeat, two more motherhumpers.
Anonymous

wow. they must make great dirt.
Fred H

“Charlie Brown’s ‘Cyclopedia.” Good grief THATBOB #31. You have just supplied me with a 1979-era flashback.
steve

Don’t forget the Giant Palouse Earthworm. Only 3 feet (1 m) long, but said to smell like lilies.
erzatsen

ugh!
unicorn chaser, please!
Tenn

I prefer bigger crawling things to smaller ones.

After all, you -know- when a big one’s in the room. Just think about all the things crawling over your skin right now. If we got rid of you, for instance, without touching anything on the surface or interior of your body, there would be a perfect frame of nematodes and stomach bacterias and skin mites of a hundred different types. You never see them or even feel them. (Though imagine how it would be to be aware of a trillion scuttling limbs…)

Or the things crawling through your bed before you crawl into it- creatures to which your sheets are a catacomb of 400-threadcount Egyptian cotton, with chambers for breeding, feeding, and burial.

Or the jumping spider named Steve who lives outside my door. He leaps on me every day, he’s quite friendly, though sometimes unexpected. I don’t know when he’s coming, but when Clocky leaps for me, well, at least I hear the whoosh and see the sun blotted out by his approach.
Cowtown2

Jeezus. Need some god damn maker hooks for that thing.
Anonymous

Those are not giant worms. Thats the hand of a tiny person.

His name is “pulgarcito”
wnewber

Yes, there are giant earthworms. The ones I recall reading about in college were the Giant Earthworms of Gippsland, Australia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Gippsland_earthworm
Takuan

OK. I’ll bite: Clocky?
Antinous / Moderator

Clocky
Ian_McLoud

Someone call Kevin Bacon, he’ll deal with these monsters!
Bray_beast

Yep, Australia is known for having meter-long worms.
Strabo

I had no idea I really could scream like a little girl.
Anonymous

Photo #1 is a caecilian, most likely Siphonops annulatus, which has those lovely rings like an earthworm. But they have teeth, and sensory tentacles, which makes them much more interesting.
Takuan

clocky?
http://www.stellawu.com/uploaded_images/IMG_1332-795532.JPG
GuidoDavid

You need to make this an “Earthworm chaser”.
HotPepperMan

Here’s a picture and more for Gippsland worms. I have seen them myself when working in Oz…

http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/DPI/nreninf.nsf/childdocs/-9599F8E44B161F63CA256BC800079622-3171B95D85BB1106CA256BC800090AFD-DB2CE7EB873B43834A256DEA00293261-4327A3B275B535CDCA256BCF00088814?open
nanuq

Just think of the fish you could catch with those!
Jake Bullet

Well, I know what I’m going to be having nightmares about for the next while.
Boba Fett Diop

But they have teeth, and sensory tentacles, which makes them much more interesting.

Glorf…hrrk…*cough*
Takuan

just the thing to cure my over-active immune system.
dross1260

Shai-Hulud!
thatbob

I remember as a kid reading in Charlie Brown’s ‘Cyclopedia that the largest earth worm on record was over 6 feet long. It seemed to gross Snoopy out a lot – and yet when I was 8 years old, I had little idea what 6 feet was, or that the ground beneath me wasn’t just always seething with such monsters. Now here I am at age 34 a little freaked out. I guess anything is possible when you’re a kid.

@#29 anonymous: please stop using teeth and sensory tentacles in the same sentence. yeesh.
Anonymous

Yeah, thanks.
Now I’m totally freaked out.

(this guy who started whimpering when he saw the Directors Cut of King Kong and the man eating worms)
Anonymous

Chtorr!
KappaKahi

Wormsign the likes of which God has never seen!
sfreader

Howdy,
You don’t have to go to exotic places. I have seen 2 foot long worms in Iowa. I was startled the first time, but saw several more late at night skooch over the sidewalk on a farm.
Anonymous

Recently stepped (accidentally) on one of these (a giant annelid at least) in a forest near Manaus, AM, Brazil. In Brazil they are called MinhocuÃ§u, probably many species but that is just usually a reasonable guess in the tropics. http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/MinhocuÃ§u

And, yes, the first picture does appear to be a Caecilian.
Anonymous

#11, Hahaha, That’s gross.
GeekMan

There be worms, but where’re the spice deposits?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  This planet is sadly lacking in creatures that can eat an adult human in a single gulp. I remember my bitter, bitter disappointment when I found out that man-eating plants aren’t real.
overunger

NNyyeaaaahh!! Yeesh!
Tdawwg

Allow me introduce you to Ceti Alpha Five’s only remaining indigenous life form; what do you think? They’ve killed twenty of my people, including my beloved wife. Oh, not all at once, and not instantly, to be sure. You see, their young enter through the ears and wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex. This has the effect of rendering the victim extremely susceptible to suggestion. Later, as they grow, follows madness – and death.

Damn you, Khan! Kirk was only doing his duty!
airshowfan

Never go in against a Caecilian when death is on the line.
TroofSeeker

I suppose that sometimes the early worm catches the bird?