pub night - again!

[phonebush]

Hope this is the correct forum. Last night's pub discussion was as follows:

 

Can you drown a night crawler (lob worm)?

 

Just so you know, and don't tart me or what ever it is you do to dummies, I say NO WAY can you drown a lobworm.

 

Phone

[Eddie]

If you immerse a lob worm totally in water for long enough it will die. Whether this can be called drowning I`m not sure about due to what I remember from schooldays about how a worm breathes!

[Dave Hill]

I don't know if you can drown a worm... I do know that if you can, it must take an awfully long time... I have recently lined a pond and filled it with water, I keep finding worms that have found their way into the pond overnight... all still alive

[Peter Sharpe]

I'm surprised at Dave's reply, because I have found that they can drown in a fairly short time, certainly in a couple of hours. I had to stop putting worms into my fish tank, as any uneaten ones would crawl under the gravel, then drown and rot.

[Dave Hill]

:confused: Maybe they hadn't been in the water as long as I had thought...

[davidP]

If memory serves me correctly (school was a long time ago! ), worms breath by absorbing oxygen through their skin - this needs the skin to be moist hence the reason they die if they dry out. At the other end of the scale, if they are immersed in water there is not a high enough absorbable oxygen content in water for them to survive more that a couple of hours. Air has 30% or so oxygen that can be absorbed - water has a much lower percentage.

[Vagabond]

There was this speaker at a temperance meeting, who to illustrate his point, immersed a worm in a glass of water for ten minutes, and then took it out, and pointed out to his audience it was still wriggling.

 

Then he dropped the worm into a glass of whisky (horrible waste!) upon which it gave a few convulsive shudders, and died.

 

"So what lesson do we learn from that" he thundered at his audience.

 

"I know, mister" piped a little boy at the back " If you drink whisky, you never get worms"

[phonebush]

Vagabond,

I liked it!

All,

Seem to me you're not being to supportive. You know I lost last months pub bash too. My reputation may well be at stake.

Phone

[Nightwing]

Phone, sorry to add to your misery, buy they are right.

Night Crawlers(still thinks its a better name then lobworms), can live up to about 3 hours in cold water, less in warm water.

Red worms seem to do a bit better, but still will drown in a few hours.

[Vagabond]

Call those nightcrawly things "worms" Phone?

 

THIS is a worm!

 

 

Note that neither end is visible - the whole thing was about four feet long - we found it (fortunately for the worm) on our way BACK from piranha fishing.

 

[ 12 April 2002, 10:24 PM: Message edited by: Vagabond ]