Worms: we all know them. Little brown invertebrates with long round bodies that sometimes excrete slime when they feel threatened. But for the most part our common earthworms will try to tunnel back underground when they are removed.

Common Earthworm

They chew through soil in our gardens aerating it and leaving fecal material that acts as fertilizer. Not particularly threatening, right? Not particularly strange or odd either. Just happy little fellows doing good for our gardens and environments. Surely there can't be any relatives of this creature that are at all strange, unusual or odd.

Wrong!

Giant Gippsland Earthworm

Yikes! That's just a small one!
Just look at it! Imagine what kind of fish you could be catching with that thing. Now I have a mental image of a little boy chasing his sister around with one of those.
"Mom! Jimmy chased me with an earthworm."
"Tell him to stop then. It can't be too bad."
"Hi mom look at this worm I found!"
"That's nice Jimmy, just put it back and stop chasing your sister with... EEEEKKKK!!!"

alt="huge earthworm size"

Just another size comparison for this monster worm

The giant Gippsland earthworm is also known as Megascolides Australis. As the Latin name suggests it is native to Australia. Although it averages at about 3 feet long the Giant earthworm can be a monster at up to 10ft in length. Besides its size the giant earthworm is not very different from its smaller cousins. It is merely a variant of one of the 1000 species of worm that are native to the country/continent.

Not weird enough? Let's look at some more strange worms!

Blue Worm

Pheretima darnleiensis is native to Borneo, New Guinea, and many surrounding island. It is only seen by humans when flushed out its burrows during the rainy season. It can grow up to 70cm in length (2.3ft).
This unusual blue worm is not very different besides its large size and strange coloring.

The Giant Blue Earthworm has virtually no natural predictors aside from the Kinabalu giant red leech (pictured to the right). The Leach (Mimobdella buettikoferi ) is even rarer and we know little about it besides what it eats. It to is often flushed out from its hiding places by heavy rain.

So far the worms haven't been to fantastic. Ok so maybe they are blue, or red, or really big but what else? Nothing here has been to fantastic or extraordinary.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...

The Bobbit Worm

Holy cow what is that thing!?

Is it dangerous? Is it going to eat me? Does it want my soul? Did it crawl out of the abyss or some kind of mad scientist's laboratory? Who's twisted idea was this?

I swear it's natural, this horrible creature is the great and mightly Bobbit Worm. Fear the worm's wrath and tremble before its power!

Not really, it's not quite so large as it looks from the picture, but the head of the Bobbit worm is quite strange. Most don't grow beyond 4in but there have been some that grow up to a meter in length. Bobbit worms are not aggressive toward humans but they can deliver a bite that permanently numbs humans. That's right permanently so don't make it angry.

The Bobbit worm is also known as Eunice Aphroditois or sometimes simply as a sea worm. It is omnivorous but generally sticks to eating other living creatures this monstrous worm lies hidden in the silt and gravel on the sea floor. It then lunges out at lightning quick speeds to snap up its prey in spike-covered jaws. Theses weird worms are known to rend their prey in two with their lightning attacks.