Bioluminescence in Earthworms

They didn't ever tell me that common earthworms glowed in the dark! Of course I'd heard about fireflies; and those much celebrated glow-worm caves in Lithgow and New Zealand. (A Mr Gavin Scobie told me about them, decades ago. He'd actually been in a glow-worm cave; and described the experience to me.)

A couple of months back, I was walking outside in the early evening and I suddenly noticed a strange glow from the soil. At first I thought I was seeing things, but I looked again and again, and the glow remained. I looked above, to see if it was from reflected starlight, but once I covered the ground, with my hands, and tested it again and again, I was sure that it wasn't the starlight at all. The glow was coming from the soil, somehow.

After a couple of suspicious nights I established that it seemed to be coming from earthworms, usually on the surface of the soil; but sometimes below. I used a spoon to dig up patches of light, and would usually find a worm in the spoon with the soil.

I was out there, night after night--like a fool--in the cold and wind, with a blanket wrapped around me, looking at the strange glowings from the soil. Dark starless nights proved that it wasn't starlight, or a trick of the eyes. I'd search for glowings, and a torch would usually reveal an earthworm on the soil. I found that damaged, dying or dead earthworms seemed to give off the most radiance.

Experimenting was fun, and I even put some worms in a jar, and brought them into bed with me for a few nights; and, yes!, in the dark under the blankets, it was not my imagination, at all! But these little worms were glowing as they moved. They looked very cute, and I showed them to my boyfriend.

The glow can be seen only when you look in a particular way. Possibly in a such a way that allows more subtle and paraconscious visual perceptions to be absorbed. This is probably why nobody had ever before told me that earthworms glowed in the dark! I don't think ''most people'' know about it. Why didn't teachers tell us of this wonder in kindergarten? I don't remember them saying so. Unless, maybe, the earthworms around here are of an unusual type, or something. I haven't heard that the soil around here is rich in radium, or anything.

Hey! Maybe it's phosphorescence, like when you chew a peppermint tablet in front of a mirror at night, and watch the glow between your teeth. (If you try crushing a hot peppermint in the dark, on a brick and with a hammer, you'll see what I mean. But please wear safety glasses, as you don't want to be hit in the eye by shards of flying peppermint!)

I suppose it could be some sort of bioelectricity. That book The Secret Life of Plants; and the follow-up book, The Secrets of the Soil, talk, as I seem to remember, about roots of onions giving off some subtle light as they grew. I guess plants and creatures still have to communicate as best they can, in their own ''primitive'' and ''peculiar'' ways. (I know there's a genetically engineered tobacco plant, in the Smithsonian Institute. It's been crossed with a firefly, and glows a little in the dark. I heard all about it on Voice of America once. And isn't their a genetically engineered fish available in some U.S. aquarium shops that glows in the dark? Still, those genetically engineered organisms wouldn't have normally glowed like that.)

My boyfriend looked up ''worms'' and ''glow'' on the Web, and found out a little--that it was called ''bioluminescence'', and something about it being a characteristic of ''annelids'', and such. I suppose that they need the light to get around, underground, and to ''see'' each other with! Perhaps they glow more, when they are dying, out of desperation? Trying to signal to friends, maybe? It's hardly burning methane like the will-o'-the-wisp!!!

There are fish at the bottom of the ocean that get about--glowing in the dark. There are fungi, too, that glow in the dark. Indeed, one type of fungi found in decaying sticks glows in the dark. Witches were very impressed, so I read, and so became the tradition of what is commonly called the ''magic'' wand.

I haven't been doing my evening experiments, in recent weeks, because it has been so dry, and the worms must've all went down lower, looking for water. Now that the ground's wet again, I'll be sure to be out and about to see if the nightly glowings have returned. I find them very pretty and mysterious phenomena. It makes me think about the soil under my feet a little differently; like it's sort of alive. As if it has a spirit and life of its own. It probably does!