[HN Gopher] Why Darwin admired the earthworm
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       Why Darwin admired the earthworm
        
       Author : sohkamyung
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2023-08-15 12:16 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (nautil.us)
 (TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
        
       | rhyme-boss wrote:
       | I love that a guy as brilliant as Darwin spent time cutting paper
       | into triangles to give to worms to see how they stuffed it into
       | their burrows.
       | 
       | My favorite earth worm fact is you have approximately one hundred
       | million worms worth of energy in your body *(the sum of the
       | stored energy in all your mitochondria).[1]
       | 
       | [1] https://ryanblakeley.net/p/metabolic-energy-of-a-worm-vs-
       | a-h...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | acqq wrote:
         | Maybe that comparison is wrong, i.e. different kinds of energy
         | compared for humans and earthworms? For the later, if I
         | understand correctly, the linked paper measures an equivalent
         | of "how much energy one gets by burning the stuff from which an
         | earthworm is made". For the former, it's something else: "total
         | stored _charge_ in all mitochondria membranes ".
         | 
         | I'd expect that comparing the same kinds of energy the ratio
         | would be more similar to a ratio of weights of the two
         | organisms.
        
           | rhyme-boss wrote:
           | What you said sounds right based on my second reading of both
           | those sources. But if you look for estimates of "how much
           | energy is stored in a human body protein, lipid, and carb
           | content?" they are all over the place. I wonder how you
           | convert from molecular content to stored charge in the
           | mitochondria.
        
       | codetrotter wrote:
       | Reminds me of this joke I saw the other day.
       | 
       | God: *Creates worm.*
       | 
       | God: Welcome, worm.
       | 
       | Worm: Thanks for the " _worm_ " welcome. Heheh
       | 
       | God: *Creates bird.*
        
         | moffkalast wrote:
         | God: Welcome, bird.
         | 
         | Bird: _Flips itself._
         | 
         | God: _Creates cat._
         | 
         | And so on and so on.
        
           | koolba wrote:
           | The fun part here is the markov chain gets a loop with the
           | development of man.
        
       | bloak wrote:
       | _The_ humble earthworm? There are thousands of species of them!
       | 
       | (Wikipedia says: "Currently, over 6,000 species of terrestrial
       | earthworms are named, as provided in a species name database, but
       | the number of synonyms is unknown." Coincidentally, there are
       | also about 6000 species of mammal.)
        
         | accoil wrote:
         | The beetle has less legs than the spider, but more wings.
         | Darwin's admiration could have extended to all earthworms.
        
       | jjluoma wrote:
       | What about the gut bacteria? No gut bacteria, no worm?
        
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