Author: Susan Milius / Source: Science News
TAMPA, Fla. — Blobs of worms flow like a fluid, plop like a solid and fascinate scientists.
A worm by itself is as solid as any other living animal.
But a mass of aquatic California blackworms tangled together flows through a tube like a liquid. Pouring, heating and otherwise playing with blobs of worms shows that a tangled mass of them has properties of both fluids and solids, Saad Bhamla reported January 5 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.A blob can hold itself together like a solid: When released to fall a short distance on a hard surface, it plops instead of splashing, Bhamla, a biophysicist at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, said. And video from his lab also revealed a worm blob version of melting. In a container of water where a hot spot develops, the blob starts fraying and “melts” away as some blackworms (Lumbriculus variegatus) disentangle themselves and swim off, while others collectively move to a spot with a lower temperature. Adding chilly water, however, will cause the blob to solidify again as the animals rejoin the ball.
Blobs of worms that ooze along as a mass might help advance the study of biological physics, Bhamla said. Unlike some more famous animal group behaviors, such as birds flocking or fish schooling, worms tangling in a blob nudge against each other and transfer forces directly.
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