The science behind worm grunting

[Oggie]

This just came across the wire and I thought it was interesting:

TATE'S HELL, Fla. (AP) — Gary Revell gets up every morning before sunrise, heads into the woods and grunts.

Not because it's so early. It's the term for coaxing worms from the ground by the hundreds to be scooped up and plopped in a tin can until he can sell them for fishing bait.

He pounds a two-foot wooden "stob" or stake into the earth and rubs it with a 10-pound piece of flat iron. The vibration or "grunting" causes worms to panic, and they wriggle from the ground. For years it was just a guess why.

Vanderbilt University biological sciences professor Ken Catania wanted to expand on a theory put forth by Charles Darwin that worms may sense moles are pursuing them if the ground trembles.

He joined Revell and his wife, Audrey, on a recent expedition and concluded that when Revell rubs the stob, worms do indeed sense that the predators are digging through the earth to eat them. The worms hightail it to the surface, only to be scooped up by Revell for fish food instead.

The rest at: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...OIcnwD98P527G3

[Shrek]

Charles Kuralt interviewed grunters in FL in the 1970s and some of them explained the mole digging and said they made 200 to 300 dollars a week grunting.

The new guy traveling America for CBS now went back to the same town to talk to some of those interviewed by Kuralt and found them more tight lipped since the conservation dept and IRS set down on them in the 1970s for taxes and wildlife harvest fees after the On the Road piece about them.