[Vision2020] NPR: Scientists Capture Elusive Giant Palouse Earthworm

[Wayne Price]

This could be a good news-bad news story.

We have confirmed that the worm is a giant palouse earthworm and they  
exist,  the bad news is that these were the last two.






On Apr 27, 2010, at 5:15 PM, Kenneth Marcy wrote:

> This story was on NWPR this afternoon:
>
> Scientists Capture Elusive Giant Palouse Earthworm
>
> by Martin Kaste
>
> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126312580
>
> The giant Palouse earthworm, a big white worm native to the Palouse
> prairie region of Idaho and Washington state, was said to be abundant
> in the late 19th century -- then seemed to disappear.
>
> Some people thought they never existed to begin with.
>
> But now, researchers are digging them up again -- and that has some
> people worried.
>
> A Foot Long And Smells Like Lilies?
>
> Last month, Karl Umiker, a support scientist at the University of
> Idaho, was out on an unplowed fragment of prairie hunting the "big
> one" with a graduate student. There hadn't been a confirmed sighting
> of the worm since 2005, but Umiker had a new tool at his disposal. He
> calls it an "electroshocker."
>
> After jolting the soil a couple of times, Umiker dug around, and
> suddenly there it was. The worm was captured and is now sitting in a
> freezer at the University of Kansas, where it was positively
> identified.
>
> But Umiker can't say how big this prairie giant is.
>
> "The problem with earthworm stories is that they get longer and
> longer, and you can always stretch an earthworm," he says.
> That's "under the normal conditions -- without stretching it -- close
> to 20 centimeters."
>
> That's about 8 inches. Soil ecologist Jodi Johnson-Maynard, who heads
> the project, backpedals from the whole "giant" thing.
>
> "There are reportings of a meterlong earthworm, 3 feet long, but I
> haven't seen that," she says. "Now, possibly if one of these guys
> lives a long time, but I think most common might be a foot or a
> little bit less."
>
> Still, it's clear these aren't your average night crawlers.
>
> Johnson-Maynard opens a zip-lock bag full of dirt, and out comes a
> live worm.
>
> She says she thinks it's a giant Palouse, but it's too soon to know
> for sure until the DNA test is done. But it is odd-looking. The ends
> are more bulbous than your average bait worm, and its body is so
> translucent, you can see the big vein corkscrewing around its organs.
> Mature giant Palouse earthworms are practically white, and they may
> have a particular smell.
>
> "What you read in the literature is that they have a lily-like odor to
> them," Johnson-Maynard says.
>
> At least, that's what someone reported years ago. The worm is so rare,
> it's hard to separate myth from reality. Now that Johnson-Maynard has
> collected a few, she has her doubts. She lifts junior to her nose.
>
> "I have a fairly sensitive nose, and I just can't smell the lily," she
> says.
>
> Farmers Worry About Endangered Species
>
> But not everybody is thrilled by all this talk of super-rare, biggish,
> perfumed earthworms.
>
> "I have concerns," says Craig Fleener, a local farmer and a member of
> the Idaho Farm Bureau, which recently held a meeting to discuss the
> possibility that the giant Palouse earthworm could end up on the
> endangered species list. "There's great potential for loss of freedom
> of what you can do with your land if the government comes in and
> says, 'Well, you have to do such and such, or you can't do such and
> such because we have to protect the giant Palouse earthworm.' "
>
> Fleener believes the country is moving toward socialism, and any
> effort to list the worm as endangered is another step in that
> direction. And in fact, local conservation groups are pressing the
> government to list the worm. One petition was turned down in 2007,
> but now the groups are trying again.
>
> David Hall, head of the local Palouse Prairie Foundation, says he
> found some holes on his property. He says he may have found the
> worms' burrows, which can go down 15 feet.
>
> He says the holes are "about penny-size, and very smooth and straight
> down."
>
> "I thought that was pretty cool," he says.
>
> But some farmers around here are hoping he doesn't see anything pop
> out of those holes.
>
> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126312580
>
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