Rudi Earthworm tells his story

The sun is burning my skin. Come on, let’s get out of here! I’m going back underground! Are you coming? Oh, right! You can’t do that. First, let me introduce myself: You humans usually call us earthworms. But there are many different kinds of us. My proper name, for example, is the common earthworm. We common earthworms are the largest earthworms in Europe. We grow to 12 to 30 cm long. You rarely see us because we spend most of our lives underground. There are around 400 species in Europe and more than 3,000 on Earth. By the way, the world’s longest earthworms live in Australia. They’re called giant Gippsland earthworms. They grow up to 300 cm long.

The compost worm is also common here. It lives exclusively in manure or compost. A compost worm grows to about 6 to 14 cm long. It is reddish and has yellowish rings.

The name "earthworm" probably comes from the way we crawl around on the ground after heavy rain. Others say we got our name because we are very active underground. In England and France, people call us "earthworms". We have a thickened band of skin in the front third of our bodies. In most earthworms, the front part of the body is also darker than the rest. We can stretch ourselves out very long. But when we want to, we can also curl up tightly. We can do this because our bodies are made up of as many as 200 segments.Our skin is covered in a layer of mucus. This is very important to us, because earthworms breathe through their skin. We don't have lungs like you humans, or gills like fish. Red blood flows through our veins. We have no eyes, ears or noses. Even so, we can tell light from dark. We also know which way is up and which way is down.

We dig our tunnels underground. They are very narrow and reach down to a depth of 2 m. We drag leaves and other dead plant matter into some of the tunnels. Other tiny creatures break it down so that eventually we can eat it. We earthworms feed on plant remains, bacteria, algae, single-celled organisms and fungal threads. We especially like compost. Compost is soil formed from dead plant matter. It contains everything we need to live. Since we don't have teeth, fungi and bacteria have to break down the plant matter first. Then we simply eat the soil containing these pieces. Our gut extracts the nutrients we need to live from the soil. 

You humans should be grateful to us. We make your soil fertile. Here’s how: after we’ve eaten, we excrete what our bodies can’t absorb. It’s still soil, but now it’s more valuable than before because it contains lots of nutrients that plants can use. These nutrients are produced as we digest our food. Sometimes we leave our droppings on the surface, where they look like little coils of garden soil. You can tell from them whether there are earthworms in your garden or field.

That cheeky blackbird actually caught and ate one of my kind. I hate those birds. Farmers sometimes spread a foul-smelling liquid on their fields, which you humans call slurry. Would you like to be drenched in something like that? It’s unbearable. We avoid those fields whenever we can. Moles are no better than blackbirds, by the way. They roam through their underground tunnels. The moment they come across an earthworm, it’s all over for it.

You humans love driving cars. Have you ever thought that their tyres kill countless tiny animals? That's why I prefer to stay deep underground. It's dark down here, but fairly safe. And the sun's rays, which dry us out, can't harm me here either.