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Posted in Segmented Worms Annelida Worms Facts Worms Generally

Do Worms Have Feet?

“Do worms have feet?” asks Max in his submission. He does not include any photos, or any more context behind his question, but we will do our best to answer it nonetheless. The short answer is ‘no’. But if we take this a step further and ask why worms do not have feet, we get to the root of what worms really are to begin with. It would probably take studying the evolutionary history of worms to fully understand where this creature came from and to explain its footless state. Funnily enough, “a fossilized worm found” only a few years ago had scientists speculating that this creature may have been “key to the evolution of much of the animal kingdom”. So maybe we were all footless, legless worms at some point in time.

tubeworms
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Posted in Marine Worms

Rearing Polychaete Worms

For reasons we can’t decipher, we’ve received a few questions lately about rearing worms. The most recent article we wrote dealt with raising marine worms, and the question before us now has to do with rearing polychaete worms (or simply “polychaetes”) specifically. (Most polychaetes are marine worms, so obviously raising marine worms and raising polychaetes are related.) What exactly our reader was asking was hard to determine, but at bottom it was about managing what might be called a “polychaete worm farm,” one in which polychaetes are reared and bred. Is it possible to rear and breed polychaete worms?