The lowly worm

[Naboka]

The kinders were studying earthworms this week. You just don't think of worms having mouths. But they do.

Worms are very beneficial to the environment. I just picked up a couple of 30 lb bags of worm castings for the garden. Those tiny mouths produce stuff that makes all my plants grow better.

Which made me wonder why we disparage other people by calling them "worms." Worms may have thin skins, but they dont'carry grudges. Thin-skinned humans harbor all manner of grudges and ill will. It eats at them. They become obsessed with how they've been wronged. (And not a bit of that crap is good for anyone's garden.)

Worms don't spend a second on such things. They're not absorbed in getting revenge just because some bird almost plucked them from the ground. They have better things to do.

Like producing worm castings for my garden.

One of the drawbacks of having a more developed mind like humans is there are more things to go whacko. A thin-skinned worm probably has never projected its feelings on a single other creature. Even other worms. But, thin skinned humans do it all the time.

Turns out that being thin-skinned coincides with low social IQ. Having high social intelligence involves being willing to perceive others in an unbiased way. People who are moving along a scale of self-absorbtion that's easily offended don't have the luxury of that extra awareness.

Perhaps because so much attention is occupied with fighting off imagined wrongs. To them it's all about self. And they don't get that others really aren't out to get them.

It's pretty rare to find that others are "out to get you" except, ironically, from thin-skinned individuals who have imagined you've wronged them.

Which are also part of a mental package prone to self deception and dishonesty.

Poor worms to have to suffer such associations.

So, in the interest of fairness to worms, and in the interest of being kind to others...

[dannyb]

There are all types of worms (flat worms, round worms, and segmented worms). Some are parasitic, and quite nasty, and even deadly. Earth worms (segmented worms, phylum Annelida) especially Lumbricus terrestiris, which you are referring to are quite beneficial. Their cousin, Amynthas agrestis (the invasive Asian jumping worm) will strip nutrients from the soil and kill plants. They are causing problems in several areas of the country. Those suckers can thrash and get up to a foot into the air. They can climb out of buckets and supposedly climb up stairs! They also release, from the leaf liter, twice as much greenhouse gas as our "friendly" earthworms.

[Naboka]

There are all types of worms (flat worms, round worms, and segmented worms). Some are parasitic, and quite nasty, and even deadly. Earth worms (segmented worms, phylum Annelida) especially Lumbricus terrestiris, which you are referring to are quite beneficial. Their cousin, Amynthas agrestis (the invasive Asian jumping worm) will strip nutrients from the soil and kill plants. They are causing problems in several areas of the country. Those suckers can thrash and get up to a foot into the air. They can climb out of buckets and supposedly climb up stairs! They also release, from the leaf liter, twice as much greenhouse gas as our "friendly" earthworms.

Yikes!

"Due" diligence just got an unpaid notice.

My bad.

Last summer, I ran across a couple of earthworms that were overly active. Put a mild scare into me. I fed them to the fish.

(I promise to keep my leaf liter abated. The wife claims my methane release endangers the environment enough. I tell her she's got the wrong animal. She counters that it is I who have errored in not realizing my pigdomness.)

As a little kid, I was terrified of tsetse flies. And tape worms. And every other possible affliction the natural world could throw at us. Having an ambitious imagination carries its down side.

Pollyanna was visiting while writing about worms. Can I blame her for my error? All that positive view of the world when the world keeps proving us wrong.

Nature is filled with savagery. Puts a curious spin on what one believes as a Creator of all this. That savagery certainly isn't missing in humans-- perhaps the worst of the lot.

So many ways nature has evolved to kill and injure. Pretty fascinating.

Being narrow minded probably has the overly optimistic version. Not including all relevant data in one's assessment usually leads to false answers.

But, since all of us lack the capacity to take in and analyze all data, we're each doomed to degrees of being "narrow" minded. Put a dot on a tablet, then look around at all the space you can see outside that dot. All the space above the trees and beyond the horizon. All the space further than the sun. The dot represents the knowledge of the smartest of us. The other space represents an initial layer of all the knowledge possible.

Wonder what some of the others players found frightening as children. You got one or two?

[dannyb]

"You got one or two?"

Not the "normal" types of fears. Snakes, spiders, the dark, or being alone. I had OCD when I was younger, so my fear was losing order and symmetry (or asymmetry). It wasn't social or religious traditions that I followed. I had a hierarchy of personal traditions. Some quite Baroque. Then one day, for the most part, they drifted away.