On building a worm detector

(bencology.bearblog.dev)

33 points | by surprisetalk 3 days ago ago

11 comments

  • andai 2 days ago

    The article mentioned Caecilians, which which I was not familiar.

    It's like a snake worm thing.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caecilian

    And apparently they produce something like milk to feed their young. Wild!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caecilian#Milk_provisioning

    • tensegrist 2 days ago

      > Caecilians

      with that capitalization i had 200ms of my brain going "what part of the bible is that"

      • card_zero 2 days ago

        When I was a juvenile, I repeatedly ate my mother's skin; but when I became an adult, I put away a wide variety of invertebrates.

        — 1 Caecilians 13:11

  • bgoated01 2 days ago

    I imagine in soil with any amount of rocks at all, ground penetrating radar and seismology are going to detect the rocks better than they would worms. I wonder if the worms make enough "noise" or vibration to be detected passively? I imagine not, but that seems like it has at least as much potential as the active detection methods for this case.

    • andai 2 days ago

      We will need very small microphone.

      Speaking of which I was wondering, a spider building a web is probably making some interesting noises (the web vibrations), I wonder if it's possible to record that.

    • 2 days ago
      [deleted]
  • yorwba 2 days ago

    How about feeding worms a radioactive tracing agent to follow their trails?

    Also, PSA from my high-school biology teacher that has been living rent-free in my head so far: If you intend to eat earthworms, letting them feed on coffee grounds helps clean their intestines so you don't get sand in your teeth.

    • bertm 2 days ago

      On a similar note, you could feed the warms iron particles for a few days and maybe use magnetometer mapping.

  • uriegas 3 days ago

    I would have not thought that a work detector might be so useful