Magnificent, rare worm with its own campaign song: the giant Gippsland earthworm

The Guardian

29-03-2025

The giant Gippsland earthworm already has an upbeat campaign song.
'I am a real worm, I am an actual worm,' bangs the chorus of Doctor Worm, a late-90s novelty hit by the American indie rock band They Might Be Giants.
Of course, Gippsland's worms definitely are giants – some reportedly stretching as long as 2 to 3 metres. And they are actually earthworms, albeit magnificent ones.
Their size is truly remarkable, says Dr Beverley Van Praagh, a species specialist. A garden variety earthworm might be the length of your finger, whereas an average giant Gippsland earthworm is longer than an outstretched arm, its body as thick as a thumb.
'To be really honest, little worms kind of freak me out,' she reveals, 'they're all squiggly and squirmy.' These earthworms don't move like that, she says, they move slowly and gracefully.
Yet despite their immense size, a song is needed, as you won't see these introverted invertebrates on the campaign trail, if at all.
Giant Gippsland earthworms live underground in burrows, in small, isolated colonies scattered across 40,000 hectares (98,842 acres) in south-eastern Australia, and rarely come to the surface.
Experts prefer not to dig them up, as doing so causes harm.
'There's an old rumour that if you cut a worm in half, you get two worms,' says Simon Hinkley, the collection manager of terrestrial invertebrates at Museums Victoria Research Institute.
Don't even think about doing that with a Gippsland giant, he warns. 'If you cut a giant Gippsland worm in half, or even nick it, it's not going to survive.'
Instead, scientists study the species by stomping about on the surface and listening for the sucking and gurgling of live worms squelching through their subterranean tunnels.
'The worm in the burrow gets a fright, and pulls back, retracts back down its burrow to go deeper,' Hinkley says, producing a sound like water draining from the bath. 'As far as we know, nothing else makes that sound.'
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These curious noises inspired an early 'talkie' in 1931 featuring the giant worms, filmed near the village of Loch in Gippsland, Victoria. The lead was a 6ft specimen, which lifted its head inquiringly for the camera, according to newspaper reports at the time.
Seventy-five years later they starred again, alongside Sir David Attenborough in Life in the Undergrowth, who declared them 'one of the rarest and most extraordinary of all earthworms'.
These giants have little need for such notoriety. These elusive animals seem to prefer a humble life, a colony of one or two worms might occupy a patch of suitably moist slope or creek bank as small as 10 square metres.
Hinkley says: 'Everything about them is big and slow.'
The Gippsland worm is thought to live to more than 10 years, possibly even 20, and produce only one amber-coloured egg cocoon each year, which emerges about 12 months later as a 20cm-long big baby.
Patient, gentle and understated. If this sounds the perfect antidote to 2025, catch the earworm and cast your vote for the giant Gippsland earthworm.
Between 24 March and 2 April, we are profiling a shortlist of 10 of the invertebrates chosen by readers and selected by our wildlife writers from more than 2,500 nominations. The voting for our 2025 invertebrate of the year will run from midday on Wednesday 2 April until midday on Friday 4 April, and the winner will be announced on Monday 7 April.