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Anonymous File :-(, x)
Hmm, I think most posters are missing the point. Most animals need to respire (exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide) via wet flesh. For fish this is no problem (gills). For mammals, the wet flesh is the mucus-lined stuff inside our lungs. For earthworms, the wet flesh is the exterior flesh. I don't know if they can respire in water but I wouldn't be surprised. Certainly wet topsoil would not drown them, otherwise they would have died out a long time ago. Completely flooded topsoil, maybe not, but that rarely happens. The main thing is that they can't respire when their skin dries out, so they avoid going anywhere dry. When sidewalks are wet, they don't mind going on them, so then we have an opportunity to see how many thousands of earthworms are in a typical lawn. They're just exploring around, looking for new territory, etc. They don't realize that venturing out on the sidewalk is probably more likely to get them dead than get them a juicy new patch of dirt to eat.
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