Darwin's Worms Cycle All Earth's Soil Every Decade — SkimNews
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- Charles Darwin spent decades studying earthworms at Down House, testing their potential for intelligence, their sensitivity to atmospheric variations, and their senses of taste, smell, and hearing
- Frank Darwin, Darwin's son, attempted to stimulate worms' hearing by playing the bassoon to them
- A wormstone — a wood-and-copper apparatus embedded in the grounds at Down House — measured worms' rate of soil displacement at about 2mm per year
- In his final book, Darwin concluded that few animals "have played so important a part in the history of the world" than earthworms, calling them "custodians of the soil"
- A modern estimate attests that earthworms turn over the equivalent of all soil on earth to a depth of one inch every 10 years
Why it matters: Darwin's earthworm research, often overshadowed by his evolutionary work, produced a specific quantitative finding still affirmed today: worms cycle all of earth's soil to a one-inch depth every decade. His decision to spend his last working years rigorously studying these 'lowly creatures' — measured by a dedicated apparatus still present at Down House — reframes how foundational, unglamorous fieldwork can be to science.
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