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Study Shows Worm Grunters Imitate Moles
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."
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.
Worm sign detected.
It's news for nerds...
Come to think of it, I noticed that my mom is doing this method whenever I instinctively go up from the basement...
YOU KILLED THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER!
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/exploration/resources/wormgrunt_harvest_800.jpg
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.
Thumpers have been known to work as well... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumper_(Dune)#T)
Ever since the term "hack" came to be applied to things like "lifehacker" and "funhacker" etc, I got liberal on the term "nerd" as well. For all you know, these fine folks are "wormhackers."
Less noise than a Thumper, smaller worms than Arrakis. Lame.
Ancient pagan religious ritual. The stake is obviously a phallic symbol. Somehow it survived among simple fisherman down to this day.