Blow lugworm
Arenicola marina
— Where the name comes from
Arenicola is “sand-dweller”, from arena and colere: it lives in a U-shaped burrow dug in the beach, and nothing of it is ever seen but the little coil of sand it leaves at the surface. In English it is the lugworm; Italian fishermen know it as the “sand worm”, and it is one of the most used baits in northern Europe.
— Facts
- Group
- Annelids · Annelida
- Order
- Lugworms
- Habitat
- Intertidal sand and mud, in U-shaped burrows
- Range
- European Atlantic coasts, North Sea, Mediterranean
- Size
- 10–20 cm
- Diet
- Organic detritus filtered from ingested sand
- Lifespan
- 5–6 years
— Characteristics
- 01
The little coils of sand on the beach are its castings.
- 02
It pumps water through the burrow with body waves in order to breathe.
- 03
Its blood carries a giant haemoglobin, fifty times the size of ours.
— What sets it apart
Its blood interests medicine more than the animal does. The lugworm’s haemoglobin is not held inside cells but floats free in the plasma, and it is an enormous molecule, able to carry fifty times more oxygen than ours and to work without blood groups: a French company has spent years developing it as a universal oxygen carrier for preserving transplant organs, and the first human trials are under way. The animal meanwhile goes on doing what it has always done: eating the beach at one end and returning it at the other.
