Mark Hodson

a world without earthworms would be a serious grim place indeed.

Mark, who's that going to be?

I suspect it's going to be the topic of conversation if you're chatting birds, and the conversation will be something like, where's all the food gone?

Earthworms are like a good quality sausage, full of protein, and birds eat them a lot.

The British Trust for Ornithology did a study, and they looked at the abundance of birds, like thrushes, blackbirds, robins, and the more earthworms you have, the more of those birds you have as well.

And so would a bunch of mammals be worrying about where their favourite snack was.

Moles love eating earthworms.

A mole can eat over half its body weight in earthworms in a day.

quite bad news for you then sandra mark i'm worried about sandra can you think of an upside well i am known for my optimism good good so i guess the fish would be quite happy right there's less angling going on less angling the maggot farmers as our fishermen look for a different bit of bait might be rubbing their hands and seeing a market opportunity we've had one hour of a life without worms and unless you're a maggot farmer monetizing maggots news is bad

What's going on down there is a big shift in the sort of organisms you'd find.

That's the bacteria and the fungi.

Earthworms generally result in more bacteria than fungi.

So now the earthworms have gone.

Bacterial numbers are down and fungal numbers are up.

And probably the bacteria which were still there were less helpful for plant growth and more likely to be plant pests because what we see in the presence of earthworms is an increase in beneficial bacteria.

have an enormous impact on the generation of soil, don't they?

Earthworms can produce quite a lot of soil by breaking down organic matter and mixing it with minerals.

They move an incredible amount of soil.

It's something between about 10 and 100 tonnes of soil per year, per acre of land.

And without those earthworms, there's less soil.