Some animals become linguistic symbols.

Worms are one of them.

The word worm is synonymous with insignificance.

I've read and heard the insult, lowly worm, many times, never aimed at myself, thankfully,

and it's always said with this air of redundancy.

I mean, think about how you would feel if someone

called you a worm in an aggressive context. Bad, right? And if it isn't already obvious, this is not

true of all animals. If I were to call you an ardvark or a llama or an owl, you would not feel insulted, no matter how

aggressively I said it. You would probably only feel confused because those animals simply

haven't attained any real symbolic significance in our language. The word worm has. This animal's name really has intrinsic

value judgments associated with it. You can even use worm as a verb, and not just when referring to a

rather challenging dance move. If I were to say that you wormed your way into a marriage or a job or a position of authority,

I really would be suggesting something bad about your behavior. So as a noun, worm means worthless

or insignificant, despite the fact that the animal is environmentally quite impactful.

They are at least as significant as almost any other animal.

And as a verb, it means conniving or otherwise maneuvering insidiously in a social context.

This despite the fact that no worm has ever manipulated anybody that I know of.

These associations that you inevitably have with the word worm, purely by virtue of being an English speaker, need to be checked at the door today if you want to get as much as possible out of this

episode. Because today, we are going to talk about the common earthworm, Lumberkis, terrestris.

I'm Mackin, this is species.

Welcome to the show.

Virtually every animal I do is a request, and when I saw this in my mailbox, I was delighted

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