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Study Shows Worm Grunters Imitate Moles
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Oct 15, 2008 04:27 AM
from the queue-the-jaws-theme dept.
from the queue-the-jaws-theme dept.
Science_afficionado writes "In the southeastern US, fisherman have an unusual way to collect earthworms for bait. The practice is called worm grunting, fiddling, snoring, or charming. It involves pounding a wooden stake into the ground and rubbing the top of the stake with a long piece of steel to produce a grunting sound that causes earthworms to come to the surface where they can be easily collected for bait. A study published today in the open access journal PLoS ONE shows that the technique works because the worm grunters are unknowingly imitating the sounds created by burrowing moles. Full text of the paper is available at PLoS ONE."
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Not news for nerds (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not news for nerds (Score:5, Funny)
Come to think of it, I noticed that my mom is doing this method whenever I instinctively go up from the basement...
Parent
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Actually it is very much news for nerds, just not for computer nerds. There are other kinds of nerds, you know! We're a diverse, colorful and lovingly bunch.
(...insensitive clod...)
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I protest! I protest mightily!
You have been judged as "not a nerd". Please surrender your uid and depart the website immediately.
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Besides, this nerd enjoys drowning a few worms every now and again.
On a side note: My step brother used to claim that sticking two wire coat hangers in the ground and connecting them to a wall outlet would yield a bunch of worms. I never tried it.
FTFA: (Score:5, Funny)
But what do the earthworms do if not collected?
And, guess what:
Worms that were not collected began to burrow back into the ground after traveling some distance.
Damned, and i always thought that disgruntled grunted worms do a kind of lapdance. Puh, another dream not come true.
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I own a wormery and, funnily enough, after giving the worms a good feed, they breed. Dig them up out the ground? How medieval is that?
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Don't you mean gruntled worms?
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Worm sign detected.
IgNobel prize worthy (Score:2)
When I stick my spade in the ground to do a little digging, then the worms come crawling out too.
When I just stick it in the ground to and move it back and forth, even then the worms come crawling out. Probably due to the fact that friction of the spade with the ground creates other noises than only the thud from the spade.
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Question: do earthquakes harm worms significantly? I'm thinking not likely.
Or is it just for the "grunting" the worms can't tell where the "mole" is.
Noooooooo! (Score:5, Funny)
YOU KILLED THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER!
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/exploration/resources/wormgrunt_harvest_800.jpg [vanderbilt.edu]
Yum (Score:3, Funny)
Fresh Gagh
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YOU BASTARD!
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worms are money, in some segments of the population. Those look to be some premium nightcrawlers worth at least a couple of bucks a dozen.
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"For it is of old rumor that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from its charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws, till out of horrid corruption life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it."
From memory, my apologies to HPL if I quoted it wrong.
Really news? (Score:4, Funny)
It's been known for a long time that noises/vibrations bring worms to the surface. The only news here is that they're imitating the sounds created by moles (if that's really even true).
Even when I repot a plant in the garden and take it out of it's old pot and crumble the old soil mix away from it's roots the bits of soil falling off hit the floor and make worms come up because of the tapping sound of small objects hitting the floor presumably being much like the sound of rain hitting the floor.
I know this because the plants I repot are usually cacti and with the spikes resting on the floor and the rootball up in the air the worms have at times been dumb enough to come up underneath the cacti and ended up getting themself impaled on the spikes. I don't particularly like worms, especially ones I have to extract cactus spines from.
Re:Really news? (Score:4, Interesting)
I sit in a cube all day. The fact that I could stick a broom handle in the ground, rub a server rail on it, and summon my own army of earthworms is news to me. It is also useful and practical, should I ever get attacked by an dirt monster.
Parent
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So because something is commonly done, but the reasons it works aren't known - there are competing explanations, your rain one was the one shown to be unlikely in the study - means those reasons shouldn't be looked at to determine if any of them are correct?
Much better just to stick with whatever random explanations we have. The dirt god does it!
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I'd hazard to guess that most slashdot readers are city-folk who had never heard of such a thing before.
So objectively newsworthy since the research has shown one of the explanations to likely be true. And subjectively newsworthy since the bulk of the readership will have never heard of it before.
Yes the original articles language might be a bit on the hype it up side. Then again, maybe that particular technique of a rubbing a stake with a piece of metal is uncommon elsewhere? And the study only looked at
Ask a Fremen ! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ask a Fremen ! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Simply stick a spade... (Score:3, Insightful)
Next week in the headlines:
* water drains the other way if you're in Australia
* put a magnet near a needle and you can make a compass !
* your coffee will be warmer if you put in the milk *before* you walk to the door and return to drink it
Any more lessons ? Please add them to my post, I think we all have few.
Re:Simply stick a spade... (Score:4, Informative)
* water drains the other way if you're in Australia
No it doesn't. http://physics.suite101.com/article.cfm/thecorioliseffect [suite101.com]
Parent
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* put a magnet near a needle and you can make a compass !
Close, but not quite. You need to magnetize the needle, then remove it once it's been. Then you need to float it on a liquid medium in a non magnetic container, coat the needle with oil first to improve flotation. Then you have an emergency compass. (I had to verify the oil part. [survivaltopics.com])
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Old hat (Score:2)
We always got worms by sticking a rake or a shovel in the ground and shaking it. Even seagulls know the trick: they trample the ground with their feet. The worms are alarmed by the moving ground, thinking a mole is coming. They go to the surface and are grabbed.
Pitchfork (Score:2)
We did similar things to crabs too (Score:5, Interesting)
Different living things react to different things differently. That's nature. It's actually fun to observe, when you have time.
We did similar things to crabs too.
There is a kind of smallish crab living in the rice paddies. After harvesting season, we let the paddies to dry up. And those crabs would dig holes and live in there, to keep them wet and cool.
How do we get them? We dig the holes. But that's hard work, as some go as deep as one meter. And we were losing to our main competitor, some crab-eating egret. Those egrets could get the crabs many times faster than we could.
So, one day, we just sat there, watching how the egrets get them. We saw the egrets knock on the top of the hole with their beak or their foot, in certain frequency, and the crabs would just come out of their holes.
Ah hah, we just imitated the egrets, knocked on the hole too, and they came out. No more digging. I was nine.
Does the technique work outside the USA? (Score:3, Interesting)
If the worms are indeed fleeing what they believe are burrowing moles, I wonder if the technique would work in places where moles do not exist?
In Australia for instance, we have plenty of earthworms, including the world's largest (which grow up to three metres long) yet we have no native moles. Logically you would expect the worms not to react, but perhaps worms in Australia would be trying to flee bandicoots or bilbies.
The thing is I don't know whether bandicoots or bilbies sound like burrowing moles. Perhaps you would need a smaller stake, or a longer saw. Could be an interesting experiment though.
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I always heard it was two stakes and electricity.
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Yes, 2 metal rods pushed 6 inches deep about 2 to 3 feet apart and connected to a fully charged car battery usually does the trick. They surface pretty quick.
Re:I guess... (Score:5, Funny)
Less noise than a Thumper, smaller worms than Arrakis. Lame.
Parent
Why go through all the trouble... (Score:3, Funny)
...and potential legal problems with imitating money?
Just get a couple of adds... umm.. I mean articles... in the papers about lava bringing up diamonds and gold and oil and iPods to the surface.
At the same time take out another series of adds stating you will pay a premium for freshly hand-squeezed lava juice.
Follow that up with a series of adds about benefits of fresh lava to sex life and penis size.
Finally, take out another batch of adds for books and DVDs about the best ways and locations for lava colle
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I hear that a similar technique involving puppies & babies will cause women to suddenly appear and make sounds resembling, "oooh how cute".
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worms..
*bzzztt*
worms...
*bzzzzzt*
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Hehe, that reminds me of that program I saw on National Geographic recently about people who collected electric eels for a scientific study. Those guys did a lot of jumping and shouting: AAAAH! OOOH!! You can't switch those eels off fortunately; if you could it would not have been so much fun to watch those guys.
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So, the wooden stake is actually the mole's attorney? The worms think a lawyer is coming, and that's why they jump out of the ground? Now it makes sense!
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* I await the inevitable, "we were first" replies from the old-worlders;)
Too bad you posted AC, I hear the "old-worlders" have pretty strict moral codes preventing them from responding to you.
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Well, if you read your Wikipedia link, you'll find that the first World Championships in 1980 were in fact in the UK - some 20 years before Sopchoppy :P
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bullshit! They hear the rain hitting the ground and think its someone knocking at their door and they come up to see who it is.
You insensitive clod, you gave away the punchline to one of my jokes about the blonde Lumbricus terrestris! [wikipedia.org]
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That's no clod! That's my front door you insensitive clod!
oh wait...
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Round here the seagulls pound the grass with their feet to attract worms
If fishermen were doing this illegally, would they be sent to Pound-You-In-The-Grass prison ?
Re:Curious (Score:4, Funny)
Parent