Giant Gippsland Earthworm

• GeneralIt reaches 3 m long and can be heard gurgling underground as it moves.
• It is confined to a small area of Victoria of a few hundred square kilometres and is protected under Australian law.
• It breeds very slowly for an earthworm: it lays a few cocoons a year and the young take years to reach adult size.
• It is one of the largest earthworms in the world: it reaches about three metres extended, although at rest it measures considerably less because it is highly elastic.
• You can hear it. As it moves through its water-filled burrows it produces a gurgling audible from the surface, and that sound is the usual way of detecting its presence without digging.
• It never comes to the surface: it spends its whole life in permanent burrows that can reach a metre and a half deep.
• Its total range is tiny, a few hundred square kilometres in Gippsland, and is fragmented by agriculture.
• It lays a single egg per capsule, around 8 cm long, which takes about a year to hatch; its reproductive rate is very low for an invertebrate.
• It is listed as a threatened species in Australia and protected under federal legislation; its conservation depends on keeping the clayey stream banks unploughed.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - no rigid skeleton (annelid)

Habitat and environment

Damp clay soils along river banks

Sources consulted: Lista Roja de la UICN; Van Praagh, trabajos sobre Megascolides australis; Departamento de Medio Ambiente de Victoria (Australia)