You are only the second person on these forums in at least 10 years that I have been perusing to make this claim. Your evidence seems pretty convincing: you say you have actually seen them physically moving growing plants under the soil.

Is that correct?

The other person was Martin "pacquebot". Anybody remember him? A very entertaining and knowledgeable fellow, and quite the curmudgeon which eventually got him banned.

Curt

Birds? yup, plenty of times. Chipmunks? @@#$!!%-yup. Squirrels - thats rare, but I had one who loved his greens. As well as a fox one summer.

But there are I dunno how many species of night crawlers out there, and if Curt has a variety that pulls down his onion and leek starts, I'll believe it.

Paquebot is still floating his Frankestein worms on other forums.

An photograph of Darwin around the time the book was published.
Darwin was fascinated by their behaviour, from enjoying "the pleasure of eating" (based on their eagerness for certain foods) to their sexual passions, "strong enough to overcome... their dread of light", even to their social feelings ("crawling over each other's bodies").[14] Their foraging was especially intriguing: they dragged leaves into their burrows, pulling them in the most efficient way, by their pointed end. On these semi-intelligent creatures Darwin wrote that they obtained a "notion, however rude, of the shape of an object", perhaps by feeling it out. Worms, "five or six feet" below the ground ploughed farmers fields. Darwin felt we "ought to be grateful" to these little recyclers, which he compared to "a man... born blind and deaf". He was wondering how long it would be until he would be consumed by worms himself." Does this help?

Curt P.S. photo of Darwin did not copy

this person's channel has a lot of relative vids, but I haven't watched them all.

Curt

Darwin said a lot of thing, not much of it was true.

Worms can grab grass and leaves that is a long way from grabbing an onion which scientists say worms do not like.

Curt. check this out www.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid.../8694377.stm

Nightcrawler is a generic term not a certain type of worm.

I deal with them all the time and have been for over fifty years.

Isn't vermicomposting based on giving worms basically live plants? If I pick a veggie from my garden, peel it, give the peels to the worm bin, it seems logical they would eat the same thing if they encountered it still attached to the plant, or alive in the ground. AFAIK, it's not necessary to wait for material to go brown and crispy before feeding it to a worm bin.

You know how you leave a box or piece of wood on wet sod and then pick it up days or weeks later and big night crawlers are there right at the surface? What are they eating? Probably the grass just after it starts to decompose from the damp and darkness, the conditions that kill the plant very quickly favor the worm.

Onions, it depends on how big a clump of dirt I pull up with them or if the roots tear off. But again, generally one or two worms in the roots.

Besides the last statement about, they also say more study is necessary.
Red Wigglers are compost heaps best friend and are "not invasive" because they cannot with stand cold temperatures.
Red worms, eat more stuff than "nightcrawlers" but are not junk eaters as much as the Red Wigglers are.
The type most commonly called "nightcrawlers" is a far more picky eater than the above.
You actually learn more from the worm farm places than most govt. sites.

You find most government sites say we have x number of invasive worms (number depends on state) but they do not list all the types. (forget about pictures)

Am I the only one who has planted onion sets and had a rain and found some of the sets out of place and upside down in the soil. Am I the only one that seen it was a worm hole that the set was stuck in?

Curt

I think so :-)

When I moved into my place, there was some species of night crawlers that started by the driveway. These things would leave a soil mound the size of a golf ball. Over the next 3 - 4 years, they spread all around the 2 acres, even over the dam on my pond - moving pretty fast, I'd say.

Then they all disappeared.

Curt