Worms and their food.

 A worm looking for friends as she crawls through her corridors, snacking on a morsel of soil every now and then. The need arose to make a new course. All she had to do was dig herself in her own hallway. And that was not so difficult. She took a big bite out of the wall, and gulped it down, that's how worms do it............... They also ingest very small animals with every bite of soil, and that's where they grow good on. Soil is also tasty for worms. They live in their own food, as it were. They dig tunnels in it by swallowing, digesting and leaving what is in front of their mouths. In that soil are tiny creatures, which also eat, reproduce by dividing, sometimes die, or are eaten by the worm, along with soil. The more creatures, or bacteria, there are in the soil, the better the worm likes it.

Sometimes they pull leaves in their corridors to have them pre-digested by the same bacteria. They can also handle vegetables, fruit, garden waste, but then the same bacteria have to do the pre-work, viz. predigest, which means that the bacterium bonds with vegetables, fruits and garden waste, it clings to it, to make it soft and absorbable for itself, just like we put in our mouth, by chewing, processing the food with us saliva, and then swallow it. So, just as we do it with our teeth, and saliva, the worm does it with bacteria. Only then can the worm swallow the food processed by bacteria, with bacteria, it then ingests bacteria, and starts digesting it.

The worm's duct then serves as a pre-digested stomach, in which bacteria live freely in the soil, but are eventually swallowed by the worm. A worm has no teeth, so it cannot chew leaves or green waste, it can pull leaves in its corridor, but only to have it digested by the same bacteria. It is a misconception to think that worms can digest waste. Bacteria can only do that, and that's what the worm makes use of. Both in the ground, in its corridor system, and in a vegetable, fruit and garden waste hotel :-). Those bacteria live on what is present in organic matter, and use the minerals for their construction. The worm eats bacteria again and thus gains its minerals, and defecates, which is unnecessary, again. That is why worm manure is so valuable for the plant, but that is another story.

To learn more about worms, go to google, and type in, worms and their food.

Hendrik.