The Shovel Headed Garden Worm

Helloooooo everybody It's me, back again for another blog post. I've brought something very weird and special to the table today. It's not an insect...it's not even an arthropod! But I'm pretty sure we can regard it as a bug right? It looks creepy and it looks like it'll make somebody out there scream so therefore it must be a bug I literally found it this morning, about 40 minutes from writing this post.

It's called the Shovel Headed Garden Worm! I nearly exploded with excitement when I saw this thing moving across one of the stepping stones in my garden path because I have only seen two of these in my entire life including this one and the first time I saw it I couldn't identify what it was and so this thing has remained a mystery for me for about two years now. So basically this is like an entirely new discovery for me! I managed to identify this thing through one of the most unlikely sources actually. My Grade 11 Biology textbook! We did a section on taxonomy (The classification and sorting of organisms into families, groups, orders etc) and in one of the phyla I found a sketched example of exactly what I had found in my garden.

So, let me tell you what little I know about these things from 40 minutes of googling and research and whatnot. When I mentioned the name, and you saw the word 'worm' in it. I'm probably going to guess you instantly thought of an earth worm am I right? They are probably the most common worms out there and you probably thought that this shovel headed garden worm was part of the same family, right? Because I certainly did. I searched google for earth worm species left right and centre to try to find this worm. Well it turns out, from what I found out from my biology text book. This worm is not a segmented worm at all. Earth worms, leeches etc all belong to the phylum Annelida, which is a family of segmented worms. Well this Garden worm I found is not part of this phylum which I originally thought. It is part of a different worm family. This worm family is one of the most widely misspelled phyla in grade 11. xD This phyla is called Platyhelminthes! Or as some of my Grade 11 classmates spell it: Platihilminths, Pletaminthees, Platmints, Platymints....yeah I think you get the point. It's the most confusing word we've come across so far.

Platyhelminthes are actually a family of worms known as flatworms. The difference between Platyhelminthes and Annelida are this: Annelida are are worms with a body cavity (A coelom as biologists call it.) They have a through gut (Mouth and Anus) and a blood system. Platyhelminthes lack this body cavity and also do not have a gut or a blood system. Platyhelminthes have thin enough body tissues to be able to rely on diffusion (movement of something from a high concentration to a low concentration) to get nutrients into their bodies. A few organisms which you might know, such as the tape worm are a part of this phylum too. So the Shovel Headed Garden Worm is a type of planarian and is part of the flatworm phylum. Most flatworms are parasitic (I'm sure you figured that out when I mentioned that tapeworms are a part of this phylum.) And the Shovel Headed Garden Worm is no exception to this rule, this worm can also be described as predatory as it basically hunts down its prey.

This worm feeds off of Earth Worms and even some molluscs by using it's mucus secretions to stick to them and not let them escape. They then secrete digestive enzymes and insert them inside the body of their prey by...get this...extending their Pharynx out of their small mouth and into the body of their prey. Now to you and me, the pharynx is the tube at the back of the throat that joins our oesophagus and nose, so that probably sounds like a bloody weird thing to do...like...if a human were to do that...they would be pushing a tube from the back of their throat...out of their mouth...and then secreting stomach juice from it. But that's exactly what this worm does! Charming! The worm then sucks the liquefied earth worm, or whatever it caught, into it's mouth and the body then absorbs the nutrients through diffusion. Apparently, these worms are about as much of a mystery to biologists as they are to me. In fact not very much is known about them. Heck we don't even know what that soft shovel shaped head is for. I could take a stab in the dark and guess that it could help with moving through soft mud, but earthworms do fine without that so I really do not know.

These worms are actually pests to earthworm breeders in many countries for obvious reasons, and also because they do not have many predators at all. Not many other animals will eat these things because they appear toxic because of the mucus they secrete...in fact their greatest predator is themself...Yup, you heard me. The only way to get rid of these worms is to introduce more of them because these things are also cannibalistic.

Now I'm dying to show you what this thing looks like and I'm also sure that you are dying to see what it looks like. So here are some pictures I took hastily before it started to rain.







Alrighty! I hope you enjoyed this slightly stranger than normal blog post! As for me. I am going to attempt to have a barbecue with family in the rain! If you have any questions or requests, drop them in the comments and I'll see you next time!

Simon out!