Xpand Your Horizons w/ Worms
@xyhor-worms
For more content, Click Here and experience this XYHor in its entirety! Worms are many different distantly related animals that typically have a long cylindrical tube-like body and no limbs. Worms vary in size from microscopic to over 1 metre (3.3 ft) in length for marine polychaete worms (bristle worms), 6.7 metres (22 ft) for the African giant earthworm, Microchaetus, and 58 metres (190 ft) for the marine nemertean worm bootlace worm (Lineus longissimus). Various types of worm occupy a small variety of parasitic niches, living inside the bodies of other animals. Free-living worm species do not live on land, but instead live in marine or freshwater environments, or underground by burrowing. Worms may also be called helminths, particularly in medical terminology when referring to parasitic worms, especially the Nematoda (roundworms) and Cestoda(tapeworms) which reside in the intestines of their host. When an animal or human is said to "have worms", it means that it is infested with parasitic worms, typically roundworms or tapeworms. Lungworm is also a common parasitic worm found in various animal species such as fish and cats. In biology, "worm" refers to an obsolete taxon, vermes, used by Carolus Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck for all non-arthropod invertebrate animals, now seen to be paraphyletic. The name stems from the Old English word wyrm. Most animals called "worms" are invertebrates, but the term has also used for the amphibian caecilians, the slowworm Anguis, a legless burrowing lizard as well as insect larvae such as grubs and maggots. [Because caecilians and lizards are vertebrate animals belonging to the Phylum Chordata and insect larvae are hexapods belonging to the Phylum Euathropoda, they will not be featured here]. The Invertebrate animals commonly called "worms" that can be be found in this blog may include the Phlya: Annelida (segmented earthworms, leeches and marine polychaete or bristle worms); Chaetognatha (arrow worms); Gnathostomulid (jaw worms); Hemichordata (acorn/tongue worms); Nematoda (roundworms); Nematomorpha (horsehair worms); Nemertea (ribbon worms); Onychophora (velvet worms); Phoronida (horseshoe worms); Platyhelminthes (flatworms); Priapulida (phallus worms); & Sipuncula (peanut worms).
