Diet of worms?
The phrase ādiet of wormsā intrigues people (if it intrigues them at all) in various ways. For historians, it can trigger arguments about a that happened in the city of Worms, in Germany in the year 1521. For nutritionists, the phrase can describe the work of scientists who are considering whether all of todayās 8 billion or so humans could, if need be, subsist on a diet of mainly earthworms.
Henry Miller, James Mulhall, Lou Aino Pfau, Rachel Palm and David Denkenberger, whom Feedback regards as the all-star team of the nutritional-diet-of-worms community, recently feasted on a mass of data. Postprandially, intellectually speaking, they produced a study called āā It appears in the journal Biomass.
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The five analysed four techniques for efficiently fishing, so to speak, for earthworms: ādigging and sorting, vermifuge application, worm grunting, and electroshockingā.
They asked the ācanā (of worms) question: Can the worms gathered by these methods feed all of us humans, given the constraints of āscalability, climate-related barriers to foraging, and pre-consumption processing requirementsā? Their answer, in a word: no.
Their answer in 48 words: āThe authors are not aware of any studies of the human health impacts of consuming a diet rich in foraged earthworms. However, in the authorsā opinion, there is reasonable evidence that such a diet could be harmful and so should not be recommended unless starvation is the alternative.ā
Diets of worms
Miller, Mulhall, Pfau, Palm and Denkenberger are but the most recent front-runners in a long parade of scientists drawn to investigate diets of worms.
Many others have focused on the diets of the worms themselves.
Charles Darwin attained some measure of his fame for the 1881 book . Nearly a century later, Kristian Fauchald and Peter Jumarsās āā occupied 92 pages of the Oceanography and Marine Biology Annual Review.
Fauchald and Jumars included a conversation-stopper of a sentence that is worth memorising and spouting if you want to worm your way into the spotlight at a party: āAlciopids are holoplanktonic animals with muscular, eversible pharynges.ā
Other scientists studied what can happen when one eats worms, especially if one isnāt a human.
In 2002, Mary Silcox and Mark Teaford examined the teeth of some habitual worm-eaters. They wrote up their observations, for the Journal of Mammalogy, under the title āā.
āWe compared microwear from shearing facets of lower molars from Parascalops breweri (the hairy-tailed mole) and Scapanus orarius (the coast mole) with that from other small mammal species including a tenrec, a hedgehog, 3 primates, and 2 bats.ā
Some of the mole tooth wear patterns, they write, can be āplausibly explained by the interaction between teeth and soil from the inside and outside of earthwormsā.
Silcox and Teafordās mole teeth research would take on new significance if and when ā despite the warning given by Miller et al. ā the peoples of Earth opt for a mostly earthworms dietary regimen.
The tall and short of it
News about height requirements for certain courses at Vietnam National Universityās school of management and business (HSB) has Feedback wondering.
reported on 2 July that āfemale students must be at least 1.58 meters tall and male students at least 1.65 meters to be considered for admission this yearā. The reasoning here: āthe school aims to train future leaders and excellent managersā and āheight is a decisive factor, especially when it comes to leadership and self-confidenceā.
That news report says that after public outcry, āHSB adjusted its admission criteriaā so that āthe rule now applies only to one course, Management and Securityā.
What schools or other institutions in the science, medical or tech world have managed to secure strict height prohibitions for students or employees? If you know of one, please send documentation to Feedback with the subject line āBig/Small Careersā. Some job requirements sensibly specify that applicants be physically able to use some particular job-related equipment. Donāt send those. Feedback craves examples in which numbers, not needs, rule the day.
Toilet humour
Inspired by Feedbackās collection of abandoned organisational slogans, Ken Taylor takes note of a slogan about things that were abandoned.
āI live in a very rural part of [the] UK ā Cumbria. There are lots of isolated properties that are not linked to the sewerage network, so rely on septic tanks. These have to be emptied from time to time. I saw one such tanker going about its business. The slogan on the side said āYesterdayās meals on wheelsā. Nothing more to addā¦ā
Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony andĀ co-foundedĀ the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website isĀ .
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