Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/02/worm-grunting-lures-worms-from-the-soil-with-just-a-vibrating-stick.html
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The Fremen of Arrakis have a similar technique for using vibration to summon worms.
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indeed they do, and I’m feeling sort of bereft that they weren’t mentioned in the video or the post!
Fear is the mindkiller.
They’re not getting rich, but they are paying the bills.
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Muad’dib is wise in the ways of the desert. Muad’dib walks without rhythm.
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Came here for this. My thanks.
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Didn’t we “all” play with little “percussive” sticks like this in music class when we were in like 2nd grade? WTF were this sticks called?
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I guess if you can get enough worms, you don’t even need to go fishing to put food on the table.
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Came here for this. Left satisfied.
(In my top 5 favourite movies.)
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Nobody likes me, everybody hates me
I think I’ll go eat worms.
Big ones, small ones, short ones, long ones,
Worms that wiggles and squirms.
Bite their heads off, suck their blood out,
Throw their skins away.
This is how I’ll live and thrive
On worms three times a day.
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This was the only way we ever got worms to fish with as kids. We used a piece of steel rod pounded into the ground and a worn file over the top of it. Never failed.
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The pedant in me distinguishes earthworms from sandworms and Earth worms from Arrakis worms…
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I believe you are thinking of a güiro!
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My Mom used to tell me about how, as a kid, she’d sit out on the back porch in the evenings and listen to the worms coming up out of the grass of the lawn. Yeah, right, mum - if you say so.
Years later (many years) I was perched on the curb under a street light outside a friends house, as an evening mist drizzled down, and very high on some very good liberty cap shrooms. And we heard - a noise - little scrunchy sounds. We both looked back at the grass of the lawn and here and there the blades of grass were moving. Now - being high on shrooms one would assume that was the cause - but - I spoke up and said: “Worms.”
My friend said: “Fuck off.” - and then we both looked and saw - worms. Rising up, writhing up, out from the blades of grass, reaching out and around until they touched each other - a brief recoil - and then embracing.
My friend said: “Fuck off.”
And we sat, in the drizzle, high as fuck, watching the worms.
In that same grass there was also a very tiny toad but that’s another story.
Anyway - worms.
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Its a cool technique but honestly would be probably more lucrative to set up some composting and let the worms break it down in some raised beds. You get to sell the worm compost and the worms
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I saw Ken Cantania give a really cool talk on this a few years back. He’s the researcher that went down to Appalachicola to study the grunters and then showed that grunting works because it triggers the worms’ escape behavior for escaping from moles. Great stuff
He has lots of cool work. Recently he showed that tentacled snakes trick fish into swimming into their mouths by startling them with a quick bend of the body
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When I was very young tyke in the 80s, before I even knew what Dune was, I remember playing Think Quick on my Apple II with its “slime worms” that would swallow you whole, and a “thumper” you could use to control them.
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Hit me!
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