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Footfall triggered earthworms

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    Footfall triggered earthworms

    Does stamping on the ground really bring worms to the surface? And if so, why? What's the evolutionary impulse?

    #2
    Footfall triggered earthworms

    If you watched your Channel 5 Rory McGrath vehicles, you'd know about this.

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      #3
      Footfall triggered earthworms

      I don't know about stamping, but I heard that the reason why blackbirds do it is to make the worms think it's raining, so they come up to avoid drowning in their holes.

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        #4
        Footfall triggered earthworms

        That's what Rory McGrath said an all.

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          #5
          Footfall triggered earthworms

          I wonder what happened in the evolutionary communication chain that allowed them to learn from the drowning of others but not from the blackbirds' sucker move.

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            #6
            Footfall triggered earthworms

            WornOldMotorbike wrote:
            I wonder what happened in the evolutionary communication chain that allowed them to learn from the drowning of others but not from the blackbirds' sucker move.
            Lesser of two evils I would think.

            If they stay below ground they all run the risk of drowning, where as if they go to the surface worst case scenario is that some of them will get eaten by blackbirds?

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              #7
              Footfall triggered earthworms

              If you watched your Channel 5 Rory McGrath vehicles, you'd know about this.
              Were people stamping on the ground beneath which he was hiding?

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                #8
                Footfall triggered earthworms

                I love it when the seagulls do their tap-dancing thing in the local park. It's dead funny.

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                  #9
                  Footfall triggered earthworms

                  I wonder what happened in the evolutionary communication chain that allowed them to learn from the drowning of others but not from the blackbirds' sucker move.
                  I know what you mean, but the choice of wording is a bit off.

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                    #10
                    Footfall triggered earthworms

                    Yeah, and the answer is probably that threats from the inanimate environment are stable over time, whereas those from predators form part of an "arms race" that never stands still. So typically organisms will do better against the former than they do against the latter.

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                      #11
                      Footfall triggered earthworms

                      Can worms drown, then? You'd think they'd have evolved to survive immersion in water, so that the bird question didn't come up.

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                        #12
                        Footfall triggered earthworms

                        It's a lot easier and more energy efficient to evolve simple behaviour than a dual-purpose respiratory system. I'm not even sure it would be feasible for them to breathe underwater - fish need flowing water to ensure they get enough oxygen.

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                          #13
                          Footfall triggered earthworms

                          Ginger Yellow wrote:
                          It's a lot easier and more energy efficient to evolve simple behaviour than a dual-purpose respiratory system. I'm not even sure it would be feasible for them to breathe underwater - fish need flowing water to ensure they get enough oxygen.
                          Yeah, but they've had plenty of time.

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                            #14
                            Footfall triggered earthworms

                            That's not really the point. If the competitive advantages of being able to breathe underwater are outweighed by the associated energy costs, then the trait, even if it evolved, wouldn't spread throughout the population. There were some interesting results highlighting this in the recent Lenski paper on evolution of citrate metabolism (technically it was transporatation). Basically, even though the populations were immersed in a glucose poor, citrate rich medium, a mutation which allowed limited transportation and hence metabolism of citrate did not result in rapid population growth until a further mutation made the transportation much more efficient. Until then, the glucose-only bacteria competed just fine.

                            It's a really fascinating and powerful study demonstrating the effect of historical contingency on evolution, by the way. Anyone in the least bit interested in evolution should follow the link.

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