Trading Cards: The Who's Who Of #NPRWormWeek
Worm isn't a scientific term. According to one of the Smithsonian's worm experts, Anna Phillips, a worm is just "an organism that is long and thin ... without legs ... that's not a snake."
Worms span several phyla and inhabit nearly every ecosystem. Long, thin, legless creatures tunnel under the ground, swim under the sea and even crawl under our skin. Some of them stay long, thin and legless throughout their entire lives. And then there are the wormlike larvae of insects that eventually transform into flies or moths.
Some worms are vermin in the modern and the ancient sense (vermis is Latin for worm) — they're parasites known as helminths that cause deadly diseases. Others give humanity a boost by enriching our fields and even ending up on our plates.
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