Free Republic

Ironically, Charles Darwin set great store by his study of earthworms, which effectively mix and make most of the soil on Earth, but his successors in evolutionary science have tended to neglect the creatures that live beneath their feet. Instead, Professor Blaxter said, they regard the soil as a kind of test bed - or “black box” - that there is no need to understand. He added that this project would help to redress that issue. “Until the soil collapses, and the ecosystems dies completely, we don't know what's going on. We have to start to get inside the ‘black...

Wieger Wamelink, a biologist at Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands, is running plant growth experiments in a mixture of NASA-made Martian soil simulants — made from volcanic terrestrial rocks — and pig manure, to which he added live adult worms. University officials said in a statement that the infant worms are the first offspring of adult worms to be born in a Mars soil simulant. Mars is not a naturally habitable environment for life as we know it, so if humans want to live there long term, Red Planet settlers will have to establish closed ecosystem models....

As environmentalists and politicians fret about man-made Global Warming, they may be ignoring another culprit: earthworms. According to a new study by an international team of researchers, earthworms could be contributing to global warming. The study looked at results from 237 separate experiments from published stories to explore earthworms’ role in affecting global warming. “Our results suggest that although earthworms are largely beneficial to soil fertility, they increase net soil greenhouse-gas emissions,” according to the study’s abstract. Worms affect how much carbon dioxide is produced in the soil and how much escapes into the atmosphere...

Ben Raisher watches as the writhing Octopus on his plate has its tentacles clipped with giant shears, then squirms in amber sesame oil like a pile of bisected earthworms. With a deft pinch of his chopsticks, the wriggling, still-alive limb is in his mouth and down his throat. Raisher, 28, smiles. It's what brought him to his local food adventure club, one of a handful of groups dedicated to dining on exotic and bizarre foods from New York to Denver to San Francisco. The iron-stomached champions of New York City are the Gastronauts, who meet monthly to feast on foods...

Dan Rather will be on Larry King in a few minutes to gin up interest in his full-hour interview with former pres. Clinton (7:00 sunday, cbs) "Veteran newsman Dan Rather discusses the beheading of an American hostage, and his interview with former President Bill Clinton. Tune in at 9 p.m. ET. "

No one would argue that earthworms are cute. But to most people, they are benign and helpful creatures — fertilizers of the garden, aerators of the soil, indispensable fishing companions. "Earthworms are truly nature's little farmers," goes one common view, this one on the Web site of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, "plowing the soil and fertilizing at the same time!" But for a growing body of researchers, the traditional view of earthworms is giving way to a much more ominous one. Most earthworms common in the United States are exotic intruders from Europe, Asia or South America, these scientists point...