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Posted in Earthworms Segmented Worms Annelida Worms Facts

Are Earthworms Indigenous to the Americas?

A reader wrote to us a while back with a simple question: is the earthworm indigenous to the Americas? (Technically, he asked where “earth worms” are from, using two words, but six of one, half a dozen of the other.) Fortunately, we have some familiarity with this topic, and it is actually quite fascinating. In a sense, earthworms are indigenous to the Americas – that is, certain species of earthworm are native to the Americas – but these earthworms no longer exist. The earthworms that we now have are not indigenous to the Americas, but instead came from Europe. This is all a little complicated, so below we provide an overview of where earthworms come from, and also detail the impact that earthworms had upon their arrival to the Americas.