Endless Thread - Worm Wars

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

When Endless Thread producer Nora Saks learned that a "toxic, self-cloning worm that poops out of its mouth" was invading Maine, she started sounding the alarm about the impending eco-doom. Until, that is, state experts clued her into the "real threat" : A different creepy crawly wriggling towards The Pine Tree State's gardens and precious forests, and fast. In this rebroadcast from January 2023, Endless Thread tunnels down a wormhole, encountering a long history of xenophobic rhetoric about so-called invasive species, and some hard truths about the field of invasion biology itself.

Support for Endless Thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, endless friends, it's Benny Ben. I hope you're doing very well. If you are like me, you are spending lots of time in the garden right now.

And most of the time, that's a lovely, lovely time. Unless there's a mysterious, terrible monster in your garden. And this episode is about that. I hope you enjoy it. Worm Wars. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Norrisax, this story starts like all good and terrible endless thread stories with an unusual TikTok star. Oh, it sure does, Ben. It sure does.

Is that a hammerhead worm? And this might be the only time I ever say this. If you see one, It's all of it. Hammerhead worms are invasive, toxic, cannibalistic, and potentially immortal. I'll break it down. Have you ever heard of a hammerhead worm before, Ben? I've heard of a hammerhead shark, but not a hammerhead worm. So in this video, there's this terrestrial flat worm, which is about a foot long and grayish brown

and has a little dark stripe running down its back. A foot? Yeah, it's large. And instead of, you know, the little rounded head, it has this flattened wide head that's shaped like a hammer, hence the name. Yeah. Or kind of a garden spade. And so it's pretty freaky looking, but I'm less scared of how it looks than what it can do. Hammerhead worms are originally from Southeast Asia, but now have a worldwide distribution.

And they have the power to destroy ecosystems by eradicating earthworms. They trap the earthworms in this slime that liquefies them, and then they drink it up. And that slime is toxic, so no, you cannot eat them. And Ben, get this. Okay, they can reproduce by severing themselves into fragments, and each section becomes a new worm. That's amazing and terrifying. I love this video.

Who made it? So it's actually made by a Gen Z z z zoologist named Lindsay Nicole. And I know we play kind of fast and loose with the word viral sometimes, but her video really did pop off. It's gotten millions of views. And I think it's because of how she recommends that we kill the worms. Trap them in a jar, throw some salt or vinegar in it, stick it in a freezer for 48 hours or until it dissolved.

That's the only way to get rid of them. This is crazy, but other TikTokers would seem to disagree. There are several really creative ways. very sinister ways with people like in the comments making suggestions of how to kill the worm. What if I put it in a blender? What if I cut it the long ways right down the middle? What if you burn it? Or just put something very big on it and squeeze it?

Could you not just squish it with your shoe? One word. Microwave. Sounds like my ex. So does Lindsay Nicole's trap salt and freeze method work? You know, I have no idea, but I thought I'd get a chance to test it out because back in April I was roaming around Reddit, Armand, of course, because that's where I live, when I found a post titled Maine's newest invader, a toxic self-cloning worm with a scary name that poops out of its mouth. Oh, what a tagline. Poops out of its mouth.

Okay, that is some serious clickbait. Right? Yeah. And usually I don't even fall for that kind of. of stuff. But I guess it was the spring and I'm a gardener. So I clicked on the post. Poops out of its mouth content. You just got to click on that. You can't

stop yourself. I'm so taken in by it. And that linked me to an article in a local paper, the Bangor Daily News, reporting some of the first sightings of hammerhead worms in the state and why it's spelled ecological disaster.

So I started freaking out, but I kept digging. And it turns out, Ben, that The zoologist on TikTok was right. Huh. Yeah. Hammerhead worms are toxic. They're extremely hard to kill.

They prey on our little garden pals like the common earthworms. And they're everywhere, especially the web. But do they also poop out of their mouths? Yes, that was also true. Okay. Yeah, I kind of see what you mean. Here's this post on R slash oddly terrifying titled Big FYI, Hammerhead Worms are here. Please be cautious when working in your yard.

Wow. It has 3,000 comments. I like this one. These awful bastards are like the devil crossed with a leech. I know. And now these devil leeches appear to be on their way or maybe even already in my garden. What did you do? Well, naturally, I started warning everyone about the impending hammerhead worm ecodum,

but I also wanted to arm myself against them with knowledge. Nice. But when I contacted Maine's Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry to find out more, the comms guy just shut me down. Hmm. What do you mean he shut you down? Well, he basically told me that article is bogus. We're not even sure hammerhead worms are actually here in Maine. Do you want to know about the real threat?

Oh my God. That's not the real threat? What is the real threat? To be honest, I think SpongeBob said it best. It was big. It was all wiggly. And it ate everything. I'm Ben Devil Leach Johnson.

I'm Nora Nightcrawler Sacks. And this is endless thread, wriggling at you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. Today on the show, we interrogate our fear of invasive species and the stories we tell about them. All at the same time. Welcome to Worm Wars. So, Ben, I promise we'll get to the real threat supposedly invading Maine. But before we burrow down into that wormhole. Oh, man.

Yeah, get ready. Yep, yep. We got to revisit that ClickBady headline in the Bankrupt Daily News. So this sounds terrifying to me. A toxic self-cloning worm poops out of its mouth and its invading Maine. I mean, it covers so many of the tropes. That's Professor Bono Supermadium. She teaches in the Women and Gender Studies Department at UMass Amherst.

And she's a plant scientist. But her life's work has been about not just doing science, but also studying the cultural, economic, and political forces that shape it. And she pointed out that we hear stories like that terrifying hammerhead worm one about invasive species all the time. Asian giant hornets, nicknamed murder hornets, officials believe they were Africanized killer bees. But the fish here are in danger because of a foreign predator,

that's been devouring them. Lionfish. Do you notice any patterns, Ben? I mean, yeah. I think I do. For one thing, this language is like, it's not neutral, right? It's like, these things are coming

and they're invading us. It's very negative, alarmist, and it's sort of like about being afraid. It also seems sort of eerily similar to the stories we often hear about certain groups of humans. Bingo. And I do believe that we have been invaded,

that we have been invaded by a horde, a rampaging horde of illegal aliens. Bonu recognized this pattern decades ago when she was applying for her green card, immigrating from India to the U.S. to get her Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. You're an exotic, you're an alien, you're a resident, you're naturalized. So there was very similar terminology of how we talk about foreign plants and animals as we talk about foreign humans. That's when Banu got really interested in invasive species.

And since then, she's analyzed the discourse around foreign humans and non-human species. And she's landed on a number of icky parallels. First, that they're weird. Other. Undesirable. Second, that they reproduce. uncontrollably, that they cause economic damage, that they are not from here. It's impossible or difficult to eradicate them.

And they don't want to go back. They're here to invade to take over. Wow, it's very stark. And this is exactly what popped out in the coverage of those freaky hammerhead worms, right? both in the news and on social media, this language is clearly xenophobic, and it makes it clear, like, the outsiders are the enemy, right?

Exactly. It's all about the classic fear of the outsider. We are going to keep radical Islamic terrorists, the hell out of our... And you say you have never seen this volume of illegal migrants coming across our border. is up for grabs by whomever gets here first, and they are coming. When you have periods where there is a lot of xenophobia in the larger culture,

then it's xenophobia not only about humans, but also about plants and animals. So this negative bias is so common, we barely notice it anymore. Are we the media to blame? I don't think it's the media's fault. The media are... are covering work that's published by scientists. And scientists use those terms. Wow, says a scientist.

I guess we're off the hook. That's conservation biologist and Brown University professor Dove Sachs, which sounds like Nora's last name, Sax, but no relation. Nope, different spelling. Well, Dove and many other experts trace this bias back to an influential British zoologist named Charles Elton, who wrote a book about biological invasions in the the 1950s. And he framed them as a threat to humanity. He talked about nuclear bombs and non-natives

in the same paragraph as sort of similar levels of threats. Elton had his reasons. After all, this was not all that long after a rash of pests and disease caused horrible crises like the Irish potato famine. His book became the Bible of Invasion Biology, which emerged as its own field in the 1980s. As a result, Dove says most of the scientific literature has focused on the negative consequences of non-native species, and the media followed suit. Since that time, the framing has continued to be mostly about how awful they are. This sounds straightforward, but then Nora, we bumped into another problem with the rhetoric besides the xenophobia, right? Yep.

There's nothing scientific about the word invasive. Well, scientists use the term, but I guess what I meant is that it's a term that is used to frame non-natives as being a problem. And the way it gets used in science is really inconsistent. Okay, but there's got to be some official definition, right? Well, according to the USDA, the feds, an invasive species is a non-native or alien species, whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health. But there's a catch here, right? Because that word harm, it's completely subjective. And so it's easy to forget that. And some people make the mistake of thinking that science can tell you what's good or bad and it can't.

Right. Science can help you understand the impacts of a species. But whether those impacts are good or bad is in the eye of the beholder. Man, I am really into that idea. Because when I step back and think about it, it seems to me like all species that exist on planet Earth should be amoral, like above our silly human notions of good or bad or right or wrong. Spotted lanternfly, Asian carp, those parachuting spiders, they're just living their best lives, right, Ben?

Did you just say parachuting spiders? Well, I sure did. I am so not into that. But moving on, I'm not sure if I agree. because I was doing a bunch of like killing of invasives in the woods behind my house and they're really awful. Like there's all this bittersweet and all these other plants that are like destroying the forest behind my house. And so invasives, you know, feels appropriate in some ways. They're the bane of your existence when they come into your forest and they really make it hard for other plants to survive.

So I don't know. I guess I just, I'm a little on the fence about this. All right. So I'm glad you said that because I want to throw one last wrench in the narrative wheel and make this even more complex. Go for it. So aside from there being no consensus on what qualifies a species as invasive, we also discovered that what makes a species native or not and what that means is also up for debate. Like, is the criteria we use how it got to a certain place on the globe? Is it about when?

Once again, if we look to the federal government, a plant or animal species is only considered native to the United States if it was found in this country before European settlement. And that, to me, brings home the point that this is political all the more. We are not really talking about native, native, and that who were the original inhabitants. We are talking about the group that has political problems. power that can claim to be native and then decide who is not native. Who to let in, who not to let in.

All right, now I'm having some big feelings about that hammerhead worm content and how I initially reacted to it. You know, that hyperbolic rhetoric, it worked on me. And instead of stopping to question it, I just went ahead and repeated it, you know, perpetuated it. So I think I'm guilty of the fearmongering too. So this time around, I really want to be more careful about how we cover the quote-unquote real invasive species threatened Maine, knowing that the terms and the categories of native,

non-native, and invasive are quite loaded and honestly kind of made up, or at least very subjective. All right. Let's tunnel down into that wormhole, Nora. I'm ready. All right. Well, that means we got to head up I-95 all the way up to Bangor. All right, so we're in Bangor now. We're very close to our destination.

Our destination is the Essex Street Community Garden in downtown Bangor, where we have the pleasure of meeting Bob. Nice to meet you on Bob, Bob McNally. Bob is a retired truck driver and avid horticulturist wearing a battered straw hat with an old crow feathered jutting out of one side. So, yeah, I just stuck it in my hat, which mortified my wife because she's like, oh, that's dirty. You're going to wash her hand. and I'm like, yeah, don't worry about it. Bob tours us around one of the most abundant and beautiful gardens I've ever seen. 250 raised beds just overflowing with Mother Nature's summer bounty.

Those are pole beans. Those are sunflowers. Those are bush beans. Bob himself has a really green thumb. But something is amiss. I've literally seen hundreds. Just in your plots? Just in this one bed. Oh my gosh. And this is like a what, four by eight or something?

Correct. Okay, wow. Dang, that's a lot of worms. The potential for devastation is just mind-boggling, you know, in not in a good way. What's hiding in Bob's beds and why it matters for pancake lovers right after the break. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science. neuroscience, chemistry. But, but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories.

Stories about policing or politics. Country music. Hockey. Sex. Of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know.

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Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. About a year ago, Bob noticed that there were lots of work. worm castings in his garden beds. Castings are the nutrient-rich worm poop that earthworms, which, by the way, are not native to New England, leave behind. But I was just absolutely excited over the fact that I had a whole lot of soil that was very similar to coffee grounds, which is a telltale sign of these lovely creatures. Bob had worms in his plots all right. Just not the kind gardeners like us usually go gaga for.

Well, do we want to do a mustard pour and see what happens? That's state horticulturist Gary Fish. Now, to unearth the kind of worms Bob did have, we needed the assistance of one of my favorite condiments, mustard. And another invasive species expert, Regina Smith, with the University of Maine. Regina shook up a jug filled with mustard powder and water, then knelt down next to one of Bob's vegetable beds, move the mulch to the side.

shake up our mustard powder one more time and give it a pour. Oh, they're coming right out. Ooh, yeah. One, two, three, four, five, six. Many more here. Bull. Oh, like everywhere you see the leaf litter or the needles starting to rustle, you know, they're coming. Yeah.

There's one right by the potato. Yeah, they're scooting. What was scooting right up to the surface of the soil was little dark tan worms that at first blush looked like your typical earthworm, just on a strict diet, until they started to move. And I do not mean inch along. There you go. Now you got one that's really active. All of a sudden they were thrashing and writhing, like possessed spaghetti? There was no doubt in Gary's mind what they were.

It's a Memphis agrestis. For sure. That's the species. That's the species. A Memphis, aggressus. Jumping worms. Finally tonight, gardeners, beware. Whether you call them Alabama jumpers or Jersey wrigglers,

invasive jumping worms have been spotted in at least 34 states. Oh, no, here we go again. I'm like sensitive to this now. Like, beware this, beware that. I know, me too. And jumping worms are not nearly as scary as those hammerhead worms we talked about. I mean, they're not toxic or immortal, for that matter, and they don't prey on other earthworms. But Ben, I hate to say this because I feel like I'm falling back on this old friend, enemy, you know, native, non-native paradigm here.

But amythus worms are not our friends. Yeah, the worms called agressus are not our friends. I'm shocked. No, 100%. Remember how Bob mentioned his soil was starting to look like coffee grounds, all grainy in chorus? that's because these jumping worms chow down on the organic matter and the top few inches of soil and they excrete out these like dense castings or worm poop basically rototilling the soil. All the earthworms do this to some degree, but these do it even more.

This happens over and over, eventually destroying healthy fluffy soil by converting it into granular, porous soil that's more like cat litter. When it gets to a certain point, then roots don't have contact with the soil anymore, and that's the only way that roots take up their moisture and their nutrients is by contacting the soil. And those pores that are in the soil, and once those pores become too big, then everything shuts down. That's bad enough in a garden or lawn. But where the damage really happens is in forests. Maine is known as the pine tree state, and that's not how. hyperbole. Maine is the most heavily forested state in the country. There's enough forest here,

about 17 million acres, to cover almost 400 Washington DCs. What happens is first, jumping worms devour all of that good sort of organic matter, leaf litter, off the forest floor, stripping that forest floor of its protective layers and nutrients. Over time, the soil gets more and more compacted, and eventually it erodes away. then you start to see the roots above ground. And no tree wants to have its roots above ground. That causes a lot of stress. Stress plants or trees are more susceptible to disease and insects,

and they don't grow as fast or do as well, which finally, finally, brings us to maple syrup. We've been syruping on this farm since 1883. Oh, wow. Some of the same trees that my great-grandfather tapped and got sap from to get syrup, that we still tap today. Gary told us about some research at the University of Vermont.

Where if you start having, you know, stressed sugar maples, you're going to have less maple syrup, and that's a huge issue. So how did we get here where the stakes are high and the stacks are getting short, man? Where our beloved New England forests and nature's most delicious pancake topping are in mortal danger. Well, it's not like jumping worms hitchhiked up 95 to, you know, vacation land yesterday. According to a fact sheet on Maine.gov, jumping worms are originally from

East Asia. Their presence was first reported in the United States in the 19th century in California, and in Maine around the turn of the 20th century in a greenhouse. We don't know for sure how it got here. Most likely it came in plants. Gary says some wealthy human horticultural enthusiasts probably imported plants from Japan or China or Korea and had no idea that. jumping worms and or their little peppercorn-sized cocoons were stowaways in the soil. And the ones right here in the Bangor Community Garden likely arrived in a similar manner in a commercial delivery of mulch or compost. So to be clear, this local infestation is not Bob McNally's fault.

But it is humans yet again. The thing is, kind of like those freaky hammerhead worms, jumping worms can also reproduce asexually. So it only takes one to create a new. population. But here's something strange. Although they've been crawling around this state for more than a century, it actually wasn't until about 2014 that an established population of jumping worms was detected in Maine. It's not entirely clear why they're just becoming a problem now. A fact sheet from UMass Extension mentions there could be a connection to climate change and longer growing seasons and therefore more time for the worms to reproduce. More research clearly. More research,

needs to be done. But the experts we talk to in Maine are getting concerned about the ecological and the economic impacts. And in their opinion, when it comes to jumping worms, it's all harm. The Asian worms, the crazy worms, the jumping worms are pretty much foe for everything. Currently, there are no known ways to control, let alone get rid of jumping worms. So right now, the state is trying to slow their spread, especially to vital forest habitats in central and northern Maine. And they need the public and us to help get the worm out. Help get the worm out. Get the worm out.

Which puts invasive species, experts, and managers like Gary and Regina in a tough spot. It's very hard to craft language that isn't going to be inflammatory. And at the same time motivate people to want to pay attention. You know, worms are not sexy and worms are not something that, that, you know, a lot of people are so turned off by worms that as soon as they hear the word worm, they're not going to listen anymore. So Regina, with the University of Maine, was kind of an invasive species influencer, you might say, produced an informational video with no hyperbolic or inflammatory language on purpose.

Now found in Maine and considered a major threat to our local ecosystems, jumping worms can have destructive effects on our forests. Oh, man. I mean, I appreciate the lack of panic and overt xenophobia. And I hate to say this, though. This video is kind of, it's a little more boring than the other

ones. This is never going to go viral, Nora. I know, you're right. Last time I checked, it had just about 2,000 views on YouTube. But if you're wondering what to do, if you do find jumping worms, it does have some simple, straightforward advice.

First, report new findings. Don't move plant material, including compost, mulch, and leaf litter. Check your plants before buying them and try and buy bare root when possible. Cleaning your boots when leaving a known area with jumping worms could help to slow the spread. ABCYB, you know, always be cleaning your boots. After spending a few hours in the garden with Gary Fish, the state horticulturist, who's been working with invasives for decades, we asked him to lay out his best and worst-case scenarios. So for me, The worst case scenario would be you lose all the understory plants.

Which causes erosion, which creates algal blooms. Which causes a fish kill. Then Barbary moves in and takes over the forest. And then you have this big sea of Barbary, and that's all that there is. And in that Barbary, there's a huge population of white-footed mice. And they are all infested with ticks. And everyone who goes near the area gets Lyme disease. And they have heart failure and their brain is mush because of Lyme disease.

So is that bad enough for you? Gary swears he just came up with that doomsday butterfly effect. But he can imagine a best-case scenario too. Prevent jumping worms from getting into forests, find a way to manage them in gardens, and eventually, just like we have with many, many other species, will reach some kind of stasis. And we live in harmony with jumping worms and that there's not all these negative impacts that come from them.

Live in harmony with jumping worms. Wouldn't that be nice? It really would. But guess what, Ben? What? Remember those hammerhead worms I got so freaked out about? Yeah, I do. Well, they're a part of this story, too.

Because when I asked Gary about what he thought about that sensational Bangor Daily News article, I was disappointed that that came out the way that it did because when I was called by the reporter, I told her that it's not a big issue in Maine, that we only really have two reports of it. Yes, they are potentially an invasive species. We don't think that they're going to be a big problem. They might actually eat jumping worms,

so that could be a positive for them. But at the same time... You heard correctly. In the ultimate twist of fate, hammerhead worms might even eat jumping worms. The worm enemy of my worm enemy is my worm friend? Bingo. All right. Before we get completely carried away, there's an epilogue.

Before we went to Bangor to see the real threat, you know, those over-caffeinated jumping worms up close and personal, we asked Professor Bono Subermanium about how to avoid some of those common narrative pitfalls in our story about invasive species. And here's what she said. Focus less on the worm. So the worm, to me, is a symptom of a deeper problem, right? So the fact that there's a worm, then there's this beetle, there's this plant. I mean, invasive species are all around.

Why are there so many of them? And so rather than focusing on this thing as evil, to talk about that larger context of what is happening to the environment and asking those deeper questions. Okay, theoretically, I appreciate what she is saying, but it also feels aspirational. Like, as we found out, even with eyes wide open, in practice, it's really hard to do this.

Yeah, Banu definitely challenged us to identify and interrogate the narratives we have around invasive and not native species and why they exist in the first place. But good as our intentions are, we don't have all the answers to those deeper questions she's talking about. or a bigger, more connected story to tell yet, except that I think the Earth is really out of balance and the blame is squarely on our species' shoulders. Ultimately, for me, the fear shouldn't be about this worm.

The fear should be about what we have done to the environment. Hammerhead worms are invasive, toxic, cannibalistic, and potentially immortal. I'll break it down. Okay, but I'm still a little terrified of the hammerhead worm. nothing is going to change that. If I ever see one, I'm probably going to run away, Nora. And I will be right on your heels, my friend. Slowest gardener, watch out.

As for all those jumping worms we unearthed in the Bangor Community Garden that summer day, well, let's just say they won't have to worry about facing off with any hammerhead worms. What are you going to do with the ones that we've found? Probably dump them out on the pavement Yeah But Because I just I can't put them back in here

Like knowing what they do, right? No No When I find them I'm more than happy to Take them out and put them on the pavement And let them squirm around Until the sun desiccates their bodies

And that's the end of it Nora we knew that one way or another our Worm Wars episode would end with a bunch of desicated bodies on a battlefield. We did? I didn't know that. I might have suspected, though. Isn't that how most, you know, wars end, sadly? Yeah, and really no one wins. That's true.

But, you know, ABCYB, always be cleaning your boots. Always be cleaning your boots. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. Do you want to see photos of hammerhead worms? No. Of jumping worms. No. Of Gardner Bob McNally.

Yes. You can find them among many other things at WBUR.org slash endless threat. This episode was written, reported, and produced by me, Norsex. With a little help from your friend, Ben Brock Johnson, and production assistants from our very own Dean Russell. Mix and sound design by Matt Reed. The rest of our team. is Amory Sieverts, Quincy Walters, Grace Tatter, Emily Jankowski, and Paul Vikes.

Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between digital communities and devil leeches that poop out of their mouths. Never again. If you've got an untold history and unsolved mystery or a wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up. Email endless thread at wbr.org.org. And remember all you gardeners out there, clean your boots and don't move compost or mulch around. you too can help slow the spread of amethis aggressus you too can help slow the spread of ameth a mythness a mythness a minthus a minthus you two can help slow the spread of a minthus agressis that was our episode worm wars hope you enjoyed it we will be back next week with a brand new one for you bye