The Worms - Documentaries

The term worm is used in day-to-day language to explain numerous different distantly associated animals that usually have a long cylindrical tube-like body and no legs. Worms vary in size from microscopic to over 1 metre (3.3 feet) in length for marine polychaete worms (bristle worms), 6.7 metres (22 feet) for the African titan earthworm, Microchaetus, and 58 metres (190 ft) for the aquatic nemertean worm (bootlace worm), Lineus longissimus. Various sorts of worm inhabit a tiny range of parasitic specific niches, living inside the bodies of other animals. Free-living worm species do not survive land, in aquatic or freshwater environments, or burrow.
In biology, "worm" describes an outdated taxon (vermes) utilized by Carolus Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck for all non-arthropod invertebrate animals, and comes from the Old English word wyrm. Most animals called "worms" are invertebrates, but the term is also used for the amphibian caecilians and the slow worm Anguis, a legless burrowing reptile. Invertebrate animals commonly called "worms" include annelids (earthworms), nematodes (roundworms), platyhelminthes (flatworms), marine polychaete worms (bristle worms), aquatic nemertean worms ("bootlace worms"), marine Chaetognatha (arrowhead worms), priapulid worms, and insect larvae such as eats and maggots.
Worms could also be called helminths, particularly in medical terms when describing parasitic worms, especially the Nematoda (roundworms) and Cestoda (tapeworms) which live in the bowels of their host. When an animal or human, is said to "have worms", it means that it is plagued with parasitic worms, generally roundworms or tapeworms.
Worms live in almost all parts of the world including marine, freshwater, and terrestrial habitats. There are worms that live in freshwater, seawater, and also on the seashore.