April 07, 2006

Worm grunting

If you happen to be in Sopchoppy, Florida tomorrow, you might want to stop in at the sixth annual Worm Grunting Festival, which offers a unique combination of science and folklore.

The science starts with Charles Darwin's last work, "The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on Their Habits", which includes a charming account of his experiments:



According to a 4/7/2006 story by Kevin Begos in the Tampa Tribune, the folklore involves "[t]he backwoods craft of rubbing a metal bar against a wood stake [which] produces vibrations that drive earthworms out of the ground. Sopchoppy might be the only place where people make their living harvesting wild earthworms this way, then selling them to bait shops as far away as the Midwest."

"I do have two children, and they can both grunt worms. Absolutely. It's something that I want to hand down to them," Debbie Chane said. "It was something that my daddy handed down to me and his daddy handed down to him. I want them to know a little bit of their heritage and their tradition."

Darwin would have been enthralled. But what I want to know is, what is the scientific explanation for the folkloric secret of worm-calling that eluded Darwin? Was it really a matter of amplitude, as he speculated? Or did his spade produce the wrong vibration spectrum, whacks as opposed to grunts?

Posted by Mark Liberman at April 7, 2006 09:46 AM