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Most people know that earthworms stir on the surface after a rainstorm, but a recent downpour in New Jersey was followed by a strange “earthworm” that scientists still haven’t fazed.
A Hoboken woman spotted hundreds of worms in a massive spiral on the sidewalk Thursday afternoon.
The creepy crawlers did not move in a circle, although individual worms squirmed in place.
Worms are known to form “herds” – dense knots that can hold thousands of worms – but not to form loose patterns like this.
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A pedestrian in Hoboken, New Jersey, saw hundreds of earthworms forming a strange spiral shape after a rain storm on March 25
Kyungsoo Yoo, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, told Live Science that while the worms will emerge en masse after the rain, he has never seen a cyclone pattern before.
He called the usual form “really interesting”.
The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, was walking her dog near the Hudson River on March 25 when she came across the mysterious phenomenon.
She sent photos of the worm cyclone to Hoboken City Council member Tiffanie Fisher, who shared them on Facebook.
Worms breathe through their skin, so when the ground is saturated with heavy rain, they rise to the surface to avoid drowning. Earthworms are known to form dense spot-like “ flocks ” on the surface, but scientists say this mysterious pattern is unlike anything they’ve seen.
“Has anyone ever seen something like this?” Fisher asked: ‘It’s a tornado of worms that came out this morning near Maxwell Park in Hoboken. ”
Fisher added that she knew the earthworms came out after the rain “but it’s something I’ve never seen!”
According to the women who observed the “wormnado”, there were many other uncaught worms in the cluster.
“ They hung on the wall of a nearby building and dribbled down the sidewalk and into the road, ” Live Science reported.
The “wormnado” formed at Maxwell Park near the Hudson River. The editors theorized that the crawling creatures were confused by the electromagnetic field generated by the streetlights in the image.
Theories about the bizarre cluster have popped up on the internet, with some blaming Biblical plagues and others citing the recent “ Worm Moon, ” named by Native Americans to describe the full moon that emerges in early spring, when the soil is warm enough for earthworms. on the surface.
An editor speculated that the worms were in a “death spiral,” a phenomenon that occurs in army ants when members are separated from the main colony.
The ants lose track of the pheromones in their community and begin to follow each other in an endless loop that often ends in death from exhaustion.
The phenomenon has also been observed in caterpillars and koi fish.
Another theory was that the electromagnetic field caused by a nearby lamppost interfered with the navigation of the worms.
According to a 2015 National Institute of Health report, some worms can detect these fields, an ability called magnetosensation.
Migrating to a magnetic field helps C. elegans, a transparent roundworm one millimeter long, find food sources, according to biologists at the University of Texas at Austin.
The neurons that control magnetosensation in worms are also responsible for directional orientation.
Worms breathe through their skin, so when the ground is saturated with heavy rain, they rise to the surface to avoid drowning.
Earthworms are usually solitary, but they will sometimes form very dense herds on the surface to share information – using tactile signals rather than chemicals, according to research by biologists at the University of Liège in Belgium.
When faced with extreme temperatures or a lack of humidity, California black worms braid their bodies together to form a “ worm drop ” that can be made up of more than 50,000 individuals.
Incredibly, the worms work collectively to move the cluster in the same direction.
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