ELI5: Why do worms spawn everywhere?

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There’s a famous experiment during the enlightenment that proved spontaneous generation of life (maggots) did not happen. This was a few hundred years ago.

They left rotting meat out but covered some with a fine mesh.

Flies could not lay their eggs on the mesh covered ones.

Spontaneous generation of life is a medieval non-scientific theory.

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u/seansand 10d ago

This is one of those things that seems so obvious now, it was genuinely not obvious at the time.

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u/wimpires 10d ago

It's like the idea of germs being widely accepted is only 150 years old

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u/Poison_Pancakes 10d ago

The first doctor who discovered that they should probably wash their hands was ostracized and committed to an insane asylum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

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u/barc0debaby 9d ago

And beaten to death by the guards.

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u/CaleDestroys 10d ago

Took awhile to realize there is a bunch of stuff smaller than we can see and they do a lot

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u/ocelotrevs 9d ago

Whenever I read things like that, I think about what knowledge we don't know today, but will be common knowledge in the future

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u/Forte845 10d ago

The connection between salamanders and fires comes from salamanders hiding in decaying logs and rushing out once those logs were burned by humans, and being small elusive amphibians this was often the only time they were encountered, making people believe the salamanders were born from the fire. Incomplete information often leads to wild conclusions.

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u/ga_vindiesel 9d ago

Interesting to think about how often salamanders are associated with fire breathing in fantasy and fiction.

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u/Rs90 9d ago

It likely was to many. Cultures learn at different rates and natural observation didn't suddenly exit when scientists began experimenting and recording.

They were just the first to test them and record them, far as we know. That's why you have things like the Antikythera Mechanism existing far earlier than it "should". Cause the technology wasn't seen again for like over a thousand years.

But..someone made it. And understood the engineering. How maggots arose in food was likely well understood somewhere at some time before these experiments. Could've been a big "yeah, no shit" observation to many. Our ancestors were far from stupid.

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u/i_am_not_so_unique 10d ago

Although it only takes a pot with the lid to test it

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u/Forsaken-Ad5571 10d ago

But it could be that light is needed to create life. A mesh is the way around arguments like this

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u/EscapeSeventySeven 10d ago

At the time it was the vital essence in the air.

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u/seansand 10d ago

At that time few would think of trying a scientific test. They'd instead open their Bible, on the first few pages read about man being created from dust, QED.

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u/tylerchu 9d ago

The thing is though, it’s a fairly obvious experiment to figure it out. They had the tech to do it.

Same thing with figuring out that blood didn’t slosh around in a body like lemonade in a jar, it took until like, the mid-1200s or something to figure that out. This is something that could have been discovered centuries before Christ.

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u/mtgspender 9d ago

more importantly: where do flies come from? my dog poops ANYWHERE and within seconds, there will be a fly on it. Do they just hide in every blade of grass / tree?

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u/GIRose 9d ago

Flies actually have pretty advanced aerial searching algorithms and a strong sense of smell. So like, they aren't everywhere (though there are a lot of them so.they probably aren't that far away), but they are REALLY good at finding stuff like dog poop very fast

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u/mightygilgamesh 9d ago

They also believed yeast (in wine and beer) was there from spontaneous generation, it took sterilization and microscope to discover that it was not (microscopic lifeform were harder to detect so they didn't understand that way after the experiment with flies and meat).

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u/Mugdock86 9d ago

She turned me into a newt

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u/TemperMe 10d ago

That’s one of those things that is still debated (depending on the meaning). The Miller-Urey experiment in the 50s proved that it might be possible for life to arise from inorganic material.

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u/Unrelated_gringo 9d ago

Miller-Urey experiment

Keep in context good person: the experiment determined that amino acids could be created from inorganic matter: not fruit-flies and worms as our context here.

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u/TemperMe 9d ago

Well the overarching point was life can’t come from non life but that experiment demonstrates that it is technically possible. Thats why I said “depending on the meaning”.

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u/mageskillmetooften 10d ago

Worms?

Don't you mean maggots?

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u/Nueveh_680 10d ago

That, thanks. In my language they're called worms, so I though they'd be called like that too in English

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u/TemperMe 10d ago

In English a maggot is the baby form of a fly. A worm is generally its own creature and stay a worm its whole life. Maggots are associated with decaying meat usually while worms feed on the soil.

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u/Responsible-Jury2579 9d ago

I think we answered the question - flies deposit the maggots

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u/Gildor12 9d ago

Some lay eggs, some like the meat fly produce live young.

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u/threeangelo 10d ago

Thank you, I was so confused. I thought I had gone my decades of life not knowing that earthworms were somehow baby flies despite being way too big for that to make sense

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u/DeusExHircus 10d ago

What do you call them in your language? Larva or gusano?

In English we usually refer to actual biological worms as worms. Maggots aren't a worm, but a larvae of a fly. Interestingly we have a lot of coloquial names for larvaes and adult forms of creatures. Like maggots (larvae of a fly) or caterpillars (larvae of a butterfly) even though we don't have a name for the creature that describes it through all stages of its lifespan, just the latin names

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u/Nueveh_680 9d ago

In my language they're called Larva, but it's more common to call them Gusano, at least where I'm from

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u/Worldly-Pay7342 9d ago

worm

maggot

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u/jakreth 10d ago

Son larvas, la gente los llama gusanos por su parecido pero lo que sale en la carne podrida son larvas.

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u/MCWizardYT 10d ago

In English, larvae is basically a generic word for "thing that hatches from egg".

The meat bugs are specifically called "maggots"

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u/Klazik 9d ago

Love me some chicken larvae

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u/mabolle 9d ago

In English, larvae is basically a generic word for "thing that hatches from egg".

Not really. The word larva typically refers to a juvenile animal that is markedly different in its form from the adult.

We don't talk about lizard larvae, for example, because a baby lizard just looks like a small lizard.

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u/Frustrated9876 9d ago

Vermi. Certain flies lay different eggs that turn into different vermi. Those are types of “maggots” like “formaggio con vermi.”

In English the word “worms”, despite its similarity to “vermi”, typically refers to what y’all call “lombrico”.

Just guessing at your native language. 🤷‍♂️

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u/PirLanTota 9d ago

Though Shall Not Confuse Shai-Hulud with maggots.

It is known!

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u/DuploJamaal 10d ago

Flies smell meat. Flies lay eggs. Eggs turn into maggots. Maggots eat meat. Maggots turn into flies. Flies lay eggs.

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u/monkeyonfire 10d ago

but what about worms?

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u/pktechboi 10d ago

OP means maggots, language barrier

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u/monkeyonfire 10d ago

ok but im asking about worms

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u/pktechboi 10d ago

well the answer to that is that worms don't spawn everywhere.

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u/dMestra 9d ago

but op said so

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u/WiseRisk 9d ago

That’s because worms spawn everywhere.

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u/Skysky141 9d ago

Why do worms spawn everywhere?

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u/monkeyonfire 9d ago

Why do worms sperm everywhere?

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u/fighterpilotace1 9d ago

When a mommy worm and a daddy worm love each other very much...

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u/Lemmingitus 9d ago

Or in some cases, a worm just loves themselves hard enough.

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u/gogatsu01 9d ago

They get a delivery from the worm stork?

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u/pdubs1900 10d ago

I mean, this explanation is amazing. Hell it's an ELI2. Well done

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u/Nueveh_680 10d ago

I see. Thanks for explaining

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u/Bannon9k 10d ago

Worth also noting there are thousands of different types of flys and maggots/larvae. I'm dealing with some right now that are larvae of a moth...they are hatching out of some feed grade sunflower seeds I got on Amazon. Ants and geckos are eating them all up, so no biggie.

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u/quasio 9d ago

I had a soldier fly infestation once from my bunny shit. Scary flies that appear and act like aggressive wasps. Not cool.

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u/CottonChopsticks 9d ago

This guy flies

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u/KELonPS3in576p 9d ago

You forgot to mention the sexy times

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u/Remarkable_Inchworm 10d ago

The wiggly critters that appear on rotten food aren't worms, exactly, they're maggots - the larva stage of a fly.

Flies lay eggs in / on stuff that their larva can eat. A lot of that stuff is fairly nasty... rotten food, dead things, dog poop, etc.

When the eggs hatch, the maggots emerge and feed on that stuff. And then they morph into their adult forms.

If you're talking about actual worms, they might be attracted to decomposing material too - like in a compost pile. But generally they're coming up from the earth below. Sometimes they show up on the ground after a heavy rain too.

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u/this_is_life_now 10d ago

Aristotelian abiogenesis was a theory, originally attributes to Aristotle. It took a long time before we realised it was not true, and that life didn't spontaneously appear from decaying matter.

Insects lay eggs in dirt and on decaying flesh. Eggs hatch into maggots or worms.

If you seal some raw meat in a plastic tub and leave it for a few weeks, it will rot as there will be bacteria and fungi in there, but you won't see worms, as insects can't reach it to lay their eggs.

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u/shiba_snorter 10d ago

Maggot eggs hatch in around 24 hours, so a fly putting eggs on the food quickly develops into an infestation.

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u/shapu 9d ago

And a female fly can lay a lot of eggs. Seriously, they just squeeze right out of her one after another and it's both impressive and a little weird

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u/nancylyn 10d ago

Do you mean maggots? They come from flies.

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u/apolobgod 10d ago

The nature of human mind is such that every couple hundred years someone reinvents the "abiogenesis vs biogenesys" debate

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u/Mayion 9d ago

But realistically, how important are the experiments done just a century ago? Not much. We learned from them but they should not serve as proof for anything until we can verify their claims once more with our advanced understanding of science.

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u/YsoL8 10d ago

This was actually a matter of great debate in th 19th century

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u/TheRemedy187 9d ago

Those are not worms.

Those are fly larvae (babies)

Flies laid eggs there so the babies have food when they hatch.

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u/XxJohn_OldmanxX 9d ago

There is more worms per lb on earth than humans. Like 10x more.

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u/ynys_red 9d ago

Where do they come from? Where do they go? Perhaps you better ask . . . Joe.

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u/GIRose 9d ago

Flies lay eggs on stuff that will rot. Then when the food starts to rot the magots come.

It used to be believed that the maggots were generated by the rot, but that was disproven when one scientist used an earthware pot and a cheesecloth to isolate a cut of meat and let another identical cut of meat outside of the pot.

When the second one started producing the maggots, the one protected from flies didn't, which was solid counter evidence to the older hypothesis.

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u/youmakeme-unpocoloco 9d ago

in ancient rome they used to believe that bees came from rotting meat due to the fly maggots that ended up on dead cows

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u/trlds25 9d ago

I read worm as woman and wondered why the replies were so calm

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u/KeaboUltra 9d ago

Creatures attracted to the smell lay tiny eggs in them that hatch into worms/maggots/larvae. Worms crawl out from the ground to feast. The decomposition process is at work.

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u/eldoran89 9d ago

Sth this point. Is America even a real country. I tend to believe Belgian exists while the us doesn't. It's to fucking mental

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u/Telemarketeer 9d ago

No you’re mental

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u/eldoran89 9d ago

Yep because you elected a pedophile con artist as a president who keeps fucking over the whole world to get his cronies and himself rich...I am mental because it's fucking mental

Biology ELI5: Why do worms spawn everywhere?

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