Idaho Scientists Find Spitting Earthworm

Scientists at the University of Idaho have captured two specimens of the fabled giant Palouse earthworm. After years of searching, researchers on March 27 located an adult and a juvenile specimen of the large, fragrant worms that have become near mythic creatures in the Palouse region of Washington and Idaho. The adult specimen was positively identified by University of Kansas earthworm expert Sam James a few weeks later. The Center for Biological Diversity had described the earthworm, or Driloleirus americanus, as a large, pinkish-white earthworm that can grow as big as 3 feet long. According to the group's site, the worms live in permanent burrows as deep as 15 feet and are said to spit at attackers. The group petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year to grant endangered species status to the creature. But the find by Karl Umiker, a University of Idaho research support scientist, working with Shan Xu, a graduate student from Chengdu, China, gives the lie to these reports of giant spitting worms. “When we stretched it out and relaxed it, the adult earthworm got bigger,” Jodi Johnson-Maynard an associate professor of soil and water management and Umiker’s supervisor, told the New York Times. “It’s between nine and 10 inches.” She admits that’s a far cry from earlier claims of three-foot worms. “We tried to track that story down,” Johnson-Maynard said, and discovered that many years ago there was one giant specimen. “Apparently some boy was swinging it in the air like a rope and it stretched.”...more