Earthworms: 'The secret weapon against climate change'

The Press Trust of India has the story today, but once again Darwin blazed the path. Not in his work on evolution, but in The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on Their Habits, published in 1881, which outsold On the Origin of Species during Darwin's lifetime: Believe it or not, the humble earthworm has become the latest secret weapon in the war against climate change. A major four-year-old study has revealed that instead of just wriggling around and providing food for birds, earthworms -- have been burrowing their way through the ground for 300 million years -- can help prevent flooding and droughts.

Floods and droughts are caused by cycles of dry weather and monsoon-type rains often said to be caused by global warming. And this is where the humble earthworm can help the planet, say researchers at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Society in the UK.

The average worm weighs less than half an ounce but it is able to eat through a third of its own weight in soil a day. When worms tunnel the soil absorbs more water, meaning that in their millions, worms can turn the ground into one vast sponge soaking up water in floods but retaining it during dry spells.

Now, farmers can play a vital part in combating the devastation caused by floods and droughts by encouraging earthworms, according to the researchers....

Earthworm photo by Michael Linnenbach, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license