Giant Gippsland Earthworm

A relaxed giant Gippsland earthworm is typically around 80 centimetres to a metre long and about 2 centimetres thick, but because its body is soft and highly extensible, a worm that is disturbed, handled, or stretched out can extend to well over 2 metres and occasionally close to 3, which is where the more dramatic size claims come from. Its true resting length is more modest than those figures suggest, but even at a metre it is one of the largest earthworm species in the world, and its considerable bulk, a large individual can weigh around 200 to 400 grams, adds to the impression of a genuinely giant worm.

The worm lives in a system of burrows in moist clay soil, and these burrows are often partly filled with water, so as the large, muscular worm contracts and moves its body through the wet, confined tunnels, it forces water and air past itself, producing a distinct sucking, gurgling, or draining sound. This noise can be surprisingly loud, clearly audible to a person standing on the ground directly above an active worm, and because the animal spends its entire life underground and is very rarely seen, the gurgling is often the main way that people and researchers detect where colonies are located.

Several factors combine to make it fragile. It is found only in a small region of Victoria, in particular moist clay soils, and much of that original habitat has been cleared for dairy farming and other agriculture. It reproduces extremely slowly, producing only one large egg capsule at a time, with a single worm hatching after around a year and taking about five years to mature, so populations recover only very gradually from losses. And because it lives permanently a metre or more underground and never disperses across the surface, colonies that are destroyed by deep ploughing, drainage works, road construction, or soil compaction from heavy machinery and cattle cannot easily be recolonised from neighbouring areas.

It is a protected species, and handling the worms is strongly discouraged and in most contexts not permitted, because they are surprisingly delicate despite their size. Their thin, soft body wall is easily damaged, they can be injured or killed simply by being picked up or by the change in temperature and pressure at the surface, and they do not survive being relocated. Conservation of the species instead focuses on protecting known colonies in place, for example by avoiding deep soil disturbance, maintaining soil moisture and streamside vegetation, and working with the farmers on whose land most colonies occur to manage those areas carefully.