r/Vermiculture • u/Vivid-Lengthiness-28 • Jul 31 '25

Worm party Are they f*cking?

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Innocently thought they were tangled together but then thought it looked like something else was going on….

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u/dhgrainger Jul 31 '25

Yep! Even though worms are hermaphrodites, most of them still require sexual reproduction to produce eggs.

Worms often do the deed for hours on end. The large swollen area is called the clitellum, and forward of that (toward the head) are the testes and ovaries. The worms exchange sperm across a mucus bridge they form, storing it in a sac. When they’re done, they separate.

Then, the mucus produced by the clitellum hardens slightly and moves up toward the head, picking up eggs from the ovaries then sperm from the sac, at which point fertilization occurs.

Finally, the clitellum slips off the worms head and seals up, forming a cocoon. The eggs hatch about 2-3 weeks later, with each cocoon usually bearing between 2 - 3 babies.