Ugly and Endangered: The Palouse Earthworm

The Palouse earthworm is a lumpy albino worm that grows up to a meter long. It smells like lilies and can purportedly spit to protect itself.

Which is to say, except for the lilies, it merits a joke or two about male anatomy.

The worm is a mysterious bugger that burrows up to 15 feet into the ground and lives exclusively in the Palouse region of eastern Washington state. It was discovered, at least as far as the white man is concerned, in 1897.

Since the 1980s, only a handfull have been spotted: It was thought to be extinct before a these sightings — one in 2005 — proved otherwise.

In a perverse twist on the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has refused to list the worm as endangered for lack of information about it. The IUCN lists the worm as vulnerable.

Yes, indeed it's ugly and even comical, but, you may be wondering: Who cares if a worm goes extinct? Well, worms are the guardians of our soil, and the Palouse is adapted to live in bunch grass prairies and to survive summer droughts by burrowing deep into the soil and conserving water.

The American prairies once featured almost miraculously fertile soil. The Palouse's prairie has been 99.9 percent destroyed, partly for modern agriculture — which shuns the importance earthworms and topsoil at its own peril — and partly for development.

A professor at the University of Idaho is the leading — or really the only — expert on the Palouse earthworm. Find an interview with her here.

Photo credit: Yaniria Sanchez de Leon via Wikimedia Commons