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i love the squirmy boys...... please tell me more about your time with them

I am so glad you asked! So these South American giants belong to the genus Rhinodrilus. They’re found in rainforests, which is so perplexing since one of the most outstanding features of rainforests is the utter lack of topsoil. I was astonished to see such gigantic earthworms in such a seemingly hostile ecosystem. Rainforests tend to have a thin layer of decaying leaf matter (just a few centimetres deep) sitting on top of solid, nutrient poor clay.

Part of the reason why the soil is so… nonexistent is that incredible organisms like Rhinodrilus and many other detritivores eat up all of the forest’s biomass into their bodies as opposed to leaving much of it in topsoil. Worms in the Amazon are so powerful that nearly all the biotically useful chemicals in the forest are in some living thing. It’s the starkest line between biotic and abiotic I’ve ever seen!

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So about hanging out with them! Rhinodriles are gorgeous worms! Their skin is a lovely light lavender and has this beautiful rainbow iridescent sheen to it, which you can sort of see in the above photo. In sunlight, their whole body glitters with many rainbows. I could thankfully tell they were vomiting and not pooping all over me (like every other animal) since they do have clitella, those bulges you see around small earthworms, which are located close to the head. If you’ve ever wondered what those bulges are, they’re the primordia of ring-shaped egg cocoons that the worm will shed once its fertilized eggs are mature.

In addition to projectile vomiting, they are quite fast on land. They’re abundant, and surface during rain, so you’ll see their tracks in just about any patch of dry mud you find. They normally walk forward in straight lines, but can really get the hell out of dodge quick with serpentine maneuvers if some dipshit ape tries to catch one. You do sort of have to handle them like snakes if you pick them up, not because they’ll bite, but because they’ll climb and slither out of your grasp. I could actually feel their setae (these spines used to grip dirt while inching forward) gripping my hands like so many tiny claws! The big squigglies seemed to have rows of setae all around their bodies, since if pet in one direction they are silky smooth, and in the other feel like a cat’s tongue.

All in all, really good animal, 11/10 reason to support rainforest conservation.