These giant worms were much more common than people realised, he said. Also with downpours, you get slips which crush their tunnels,' Mr Kleinpaste said. they don't want to drown, they don't have gills, they need oxygen to run through their skin.

'When it rains really hard, their burrows can run full of water. The fastest you can move is in your tunnels below the ground.'īut this week's torrential rain would have driven this specimen out of its tunnels. And secondly, you can't crawl away quickly, you're not a snake. 'If you come above the ground and you are 1.4 metres and, say, an inch or an inch and a half thick, you are a serious breakfast.

In all these years we'd always liked to have seen one, but when they're that long and the clay ground's that hard it'd be impossible to get one out in one piece.'Įntomologist Ruud Kleinpaste said that was because the worms were safe in the earth and knew it would be dangerous to venture out. In 40 years running the park, Mr Borich had never seen one.

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