Biology Paper

So for my Bio 100 classI had to write a book report on the book The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Eathworms. I am an awful person with very little interest in science...that's not completely true. I enjoy learning about live bearing fish, technology, beards, the behavior of mallard ducks and all sorts of stuff. I just like science when I get to learn about it on my own terms. Reading this book was not on my terms, so I only scanned and retained very little, but the paper that came out of it...whoa. It might be my favorite paper I have ever written. Ever. Here it is. Enjoy.


The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms

Who hasn’t when they were a kid - or even recently, I won’t judge - lifted up an old brick in the garden and poked at the worms underneath it? I have always thought that worms were fascinating which is why I chose How to Eat Fried Worms for my natural history book to do a report on, but then Dr. Belk didn‘t approve, so I went with, instead, The Earth Moved.

The Earth Moved was an interesting read because it was written by a gardener, not a scientist so it wasn’t a book that overwhelmed me with technical words or made me feel stupid. In layman’s terms, the book described how earthworms help out the soil that we, animals, minerals, and vegetables (well, I guess not minerals - they wouldn’t be reading my paper), use. Earthworms “plow” through the soil, aerating it and replenishing the nutrients that get used up. Earthworms are blind and deaf, and completely okay with that; below ground there isn’t much to be seen that can’t be eaten. Besides, all dirt is essentially some other worms excrement and what kind of creature wants to eat and see that.

What I really liked about reading this book though, was that it made me think about worms. Although I must admit I was disappointed when by the end of it, it wasn’t mentioned that worms make much, much better fish bait than crickets.
On a completely (well, sort of) serious note, Darwin actually thought about worms, too, and thought that earthworms were among the most interesting creatures on or in the earth. Many people criticized him for that opinion, but he stuck by it, and any creature with the Darwin Stamp of Approval is legit.

But I had really never considered how much worms really do for our world. Today we hear a lot about what people do to the world and about going green, but if we take it all the way back to the basics earthworms are the original defenders of our world. They take waste and transform it into something more useful. I told my roommate, a biology major, about this paper and how I was writing about worms and she said that they were basically, entirely a digestive system. This is something that I thought was amazing. My sisters and I are forever cursing the name Clint Mabey because he passed down to us a terrible, terrible digestive system. Pork, no way. Ice cream, fuhgeddaboudit. A whole creature that is just a fully functional digestive system? Whoa. It’s a mind boggling concept to me. And to Darwin, too, apparently; he also had terrible digestive problems and spent a lot of his time sick as a dog. People like my friend Chuckie D and myself can truly appreciate the impressive power of the earthworm.

Something that reading this made me wonder, random as it may seem in a paper so strictly structured, is how long have earthworms been around? I know that cockroaches (nasty little buggers) have been around for millions of years, but have earthworms been present just as long, just hanging out underground? Are there any fossilized worms? No, I guess not since they have no bones; they would die, decompose and then get broken down by another worm. Oh, gross.

But that is what earthworms do: break down the gross stuff that we don’t like to think about while we just piddle around in our gardens, waiting for our okra and zucchini to be ready to harvest.



I made a 91 on it. Thank goodnes for TAs with a sense of humor and mercy.