Giants of the Mountain
	MENNO SCHILTHUIZEN opens a can of worms up on Gunung Kinabalu (Originally published in The Star of 17 August 2004.) Legend has it that a giant dragon dwells on the summit of Mount Kinabalu. Kinabalu, at 4,095 m the tallest peak in Southeast Asia, is climbed by thousands of hikers each year, and the dragon remains undiscovered. Yet cries of awe, disgust and fear are often heard from groups of climbers passing through the rain-drenched cloud forest between 2,500 and 3,000 m altitude. What apparition makes them react this way? In this part of the mountain, giants are sometimes met with on the wet forest trails that are every bit as bizarre and mysterious as the mythical dragon. The Kinabalu Giant Earthworm is one of these awe-inspiring creatures. A full 70 cm long when stretched-out, the animal is not your average garden worm. It is bluish-grey and lives in burrows in the soft and thick soils that build up at these altitudes. It is particularly common in the lush forest around Paka Cave, at some 3,000 m above sea level. Here, the forest floor carries tell-tale signs of its presence: worm casts are found by the thousands. These regularly-shaped, up to four cm-wide turrets are actually the worm faeces, deposited in what must be circular motions of the back-end of the worm as it sits in its subsurface burrow. In some parts of the forest, the casts, which are made up of digested soil particles, mucus and bacteria, are so numerous that undisturbed earth cannot even be seen. In spite of the ubiquity of their "droppings" (a bit of a misnomer for excrement that is pushed up from below), the animals themselves are rarely come across. They only come to the surface during very heavy rains. It is not clear why. Some say they are flushed out of their burrows, and need to come to the surface to breathe; others say the worms appear during rain to mate. Whatever the reason, an encounter with a giant earthworm in the pouring rain is not easily forgotten. Its skin is surpisingly beautiful, with microscopic hairs producing a greenish iridescent gloss over the bluish-grey background. In the hand, the animal shows its amazing strength, due to the tube-like muscle layers that keep it in shape, and it is impossible to prevent it from wriggling its way out of one's grasp. Its impatience may mean it is in fact looking for a mate. Like all earthworms, the animals are hermaphrodites, that is, a single worm carries both male and female sexual organs. Yet they cannot fertilise themselves and they still need to mate. Two animals will align themselves, rubbing their bellies against each other and deposit sperm in special sperm-depositories called spermathecae. The Kinabalu Giant has four pairs of spermathecae just behind its head. A bit further down is a darker, smooth ring called the clitellum. After mating, it can take a while before the actual fertilization takes place. When the animal feels it is time to lay eggs, the clitellum secretes a tube-shaped, detachable cocoon that the worm then backs out of, meanwhile injecting its own eggs and its mate's sperm. The Kinabalu Giant Earthworm is actually not the world's only giant worm, nor is it the largest. Adolphe Vorderman, a 19th-century government health inspector in the Dutch East Indies, found a 50 cm-long worm in the mountain forests of Java in 1882 and gave it the name Metaphire musica, or Cacing sondari in Malay. The name derived from the fact that the Java worm, as Vorderman wrote: "has the peculiarity to emit a sound that is very characteristic. At night the worms now and then produce a brief shrill sound, which I may best compare with the ringing of an alarm clock, and which can be imitated by pronouncing 'keerrrrrrrrrrrr' at a high-pitched voice." When Vorderman dissected his specimens, he found a "barrel-shaped almost cylindrical organ," which he thought was the sound-organ. The Kinabalu Giant Earthworm is closely related to the one from Java, but it does not seem to produce any sound. I kept an individual in a plastic bag for a couple of days and could never catch it in the act of any musical activities. But even a taciturn giant is impressive for its sheer size. And yet, some Australian earthworms are even larger. The giant Gippsland earthworm, which occurs in a small region on Australia's east coast and has a special worm-shaped museum devoted to it, easily reaches 1.40 m in length, while South Africa allegedly boasts worms several metres in length! One would think such monsters have no enemies, but at least for the Kinabalu worm this is not true. Along the same forest paths where the earthworm is sometimes gleaned, also the Giant Earthworm's worst nightmare may be spotted: the Kinabalu Giant Leech or Mimobdella buettikoferi. It is dark grey with brick-red stripes and some 15 cm from head to tail--a sure shriek-jerker to unwary tourists. However, they have nothing to fear. In a true "battle of the giants," the Kinabalu Giant Leech will only attack and eat the Kinabalu Giant Earthworm. Dr. Menno Schilthuizen is an associate professor at Universiti Malaysia Sabah. He studies the taxonomy and evolution of land snails and other slimy invertebrates and runs a research programme on Mount Kinabalu in association with Sabah Parks. captions: Fig. 1. The Kinabalu Giant Earthworm on its way to frighten more climbers. Photo Menno Schilthuizen Fig. 2. A small one. Large individuals of the Kinabalu Giant Earthworm can reach 70 cm in length. Photo Menno Schilthuizen Fig. 3. No dragon but worms live on the summit of Mount Kinabalu in Sabah. Fig. 4. Cloud forest at 3,000 m altitude on Mount Kinabalu, where the Kinabalu Giant Earthworm meets its match, the Kinabalu Giant Leech.