The Beasts that Hide from Man (7 page)

However, there is one mitigating factor. Certain earthworms do live in relatively dry soils, and are able to avoid excessive water loss through their skin via the development of specialized excretory organs known as enteronephric nephridia. Instead of excreting urine directly into the outside world, these modified nephridia pass the urine into the digestive system, where most of the water can be reabsorbed while going through the intestine. Such a system, especially if enhanced by further evolution, would be invaluable to any earthworm attempting to survive in the desert.

Even so, another contradiction between the death worm’s behavior and that of bona fide earthworms is that it only surfaces during the Gobi’s two hottest months, June and July. Earthworms, conversely, tend to burrow deeper into the soil during hot, dry periods, sometimes entering a period of quiescence or aestivation until damper conditions return. Unless the death worm is an earthworm that has developed an impervious cuticle, it is difficult to reconcile its sunbathing proclivity with anticipated earthworm activity.

I mentioned earlier that Ivan Mackerle discovered that the people of Kazakhstan have their own name for the
allghoi khorkhoi
. In addition, a very curious type of vermiform mystery beast that may (or may not) be allied to the death worm has also been reported from the steppes and desert dunes of Kalmykia. This is a region of Russia to the north of Chechnya and Dagestan, and lies immediately to the west of Kazakhstan.

According to a letter of January 6,1997, written to Michel Raynal by veteran Russian cryptozoologist Dr. Marie-Jeanne Koffmann, this unidentified creature is referred to by the Kalmyks as the “short grey snake.” Measuring 50 cm (20 inches) long and 15 to 20 cm (six to eight inches) in diameter, it has smooth grey skin, and is rounded at its anterior end, but terminates abruptly with a very short tail. So far, its local “snake” appellation would seem to be appropriate, but it also has one characteristic that instantly sets it apart from any bona fide serpent and ostensibly places it among vermiforms of the invertebrate kind instead — for according to the Kalmyks, their so-called “short grey snake” does not possess any bones.

This would appear to be substantiated by their claim that if one of these beasts is struck hard in the middle of its back with a stick, it explodes—leaving behind a patch of slime or grease stretching more than a meter in diameter across the ground as the only evidence of its former existence. Although she is not absolutely certain (her original notes were destroyed during a burglary in her office), Dr. Koffmann believes she was told that this animal is slow moving, and moves in a worm-like manner. As to whether it is dangerous, however, some Kalmyks affirm that it is, but others state that it is not.

No mention is given of any facial features (although Koffmann claims that a second, smaller variety also exists here, which has a clearly delineated mouth). In any event, Kalmykia’s exploding “worm” exhibits sufficient differences from the
allghoi khorkhoi
for me to see little reason for assuming that these two creatures share anything other than the dubious honor of being presently unrecognized and thus ignored by modern-day science.

Also called gymnophionids, caecilians are limbless soil-burrowing amphibians whose slender, externally annulated bodies with confusingly similar head and tail (when present) afford them a striking outward resemblance to earthworms—so much so that they are easily mistaken for them when seen. Having said that, caecilians are rarely seen, because they generally emerge onto the soil surface only at night, or if washed out of their underground burrows by rain (there are also a few genuinely aquatic species, and some others have aquatic larvae). When moving, they often undergo vermiform locomotion, just like bona fide earthworms.

The caecilian head is very nondescript, equipped with an inconspicuous mouth with which it seizes earthworms, arthropods, and small soil-dwelling vertebrates as prey, plus a pair of laterally sited eyes. These are tiny and usually functionless (sometimes concealed beneath the skin, or even underneath skull bones in some species). There is also a protrusible tentacle housed in a small pit on each side of the head. Although a caecilian’s body looks smooth, it often possesses small calcified scales embedded within its skin.

The world’s largest known species is Thompson’s caecilian
Caecilia thompsoni
from Colombia, which measures approximately four and a half feet long, but most of the other 70-odd species presently recognized are under two feet in length. None has a diameter exceeding two inches.

Caecilians are confined to warm temperate and tropical regions in Central Africa, Central and South America, India, and southeastern Asia. On account of their subterranean lifestyle, however, they are easily missed, and new species are still being discovered. Could the death worm thus be an unknown species of sizeable caecilian? Its morphology is certainly similar, but its arid, sand-swept desert terrain is very different from the moist, damp, tropical soil world inhabited by those caecilians currently documented.

If a caecilian were to survive in what, for these amphibians, would be as atypical and extreme an environment as a desert, it would need to develop a very efficient means of avoiding desiccation. Such an adaptation would not be unprecedented among amphibians, however, for there are a number of desert-dwelling frogs and toads. These avoid the perils of water loss by a variety of different means.

Some, for instance, bury themselves deep in the sand and undergo periods of dormancy or aestivation, ensheathed in a cocoon of hardened mucus, or composed of several layers of dead skin formed from unshed epithelial cells. Certain other desert amphibians possess a layer of skin rich in mucopolysaccharides, which “seals in” their body water by acting as a sponge, binding water and releasing it only when required. Even so, the image of a caecilian lying on the surface of the sand during June and July, the Gobi’s two hottest months, as the death worm is said to do, remains for me a very difficult one to accept.

Also, the death worm’s toxin-squirting capability cannot be explained by the caecilian identity at all, because these apodous amphibians are neither toxic nor able to emit fluid in this manner. However, as with many other harmless animals, some native people firmly if erroneously choose to believe otherwise. For instance, the Lafrentz caecilian
Dermophis oaxacae
, a blue-black species from Oaxaca, Mexico, and known to the locals as
metlapil
, is fervently but mistakenly believed by them to be very venomous and willing to bite.

Clearly, therefore, there are persuasive precedents on record for taking seriously the possibility that the death worm is more sinned against than sinner, with its lethal powers owing more to human imagination than physiological evolution.

The squamatans comprise a taxonomie order of scaly reptiles traditionally divided into three sub-orders. Two are very familiar—the lizards (Sauria=Lacertilia), and the snakes (Serpentes=Ophidia). The third, conversely, is virtually unknown except to zoologists, who refer to it as
Amphisbaenia
, and to its 140-odd species as amphisbaenids or worm-lizards.

Like caecilians, these slender, limbless, burrowing vertebrates are deceptively similar in outward form to earthworms. Many are red or brown in color (though a few are handsomely spotted in black and white), and come complete once again with heavily ringed bodies terminating in a near-identical, virtually featureless head and tail.

An amphisbaenid’s head is blunt and its skull heavily reinforced with bone to facilitate an exclusively fossorial existence—an existence having little use for eyes, which are therefore tiny and covered by a layer of scales. The tail is also blunt, and is waved in the air if the animal is disturbed while at the soil surface—fooling potential predators into attacking its tail (which in some species can be shed), instead of its head (which can’t!). Indeed, human observers often mistakenly believe that these reptiles have a head at each end of their body, like the legendary vermiform monster after which they are named.

Amphisbaenids feed upon soil-dwelling arthropods and earthworms, which they encounter while tunnelling or when emerging above-ground, either at night or if flooded out of their burrows during rainfall. They will even lie in wait for prey victims, just below the soil surface, because they are very sensitive to vibrations. Once they detect any movement overhead from unwary prey, they lunge up through the soil and seize it.

Amphisbaenids can be found in tropical or subtropical regions of southern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and both American continents, including arid regions, where their scaly skin is better able to resist water loss than the smooth, moist skin of earthworms and caecilians. Is it conceivable, therefore, that the
allghoi khorkhoi
is an undiscovered species of giant, desert-adapted amphisbaenid?

This identity is favored by Czech cryptozoologist Jaroslav Mares, who rightly emphasizes the external similarity of amphisbaenids to the nomads’ description of the death worm. Moreover, the latter’s locomotion, which has been likened by nomads to that of a worm, can also be reconciled with an amphisbaenid identity. Their mode of progression through the soil was well described by herpetologist Chris Mattison in
Lizards of the World
(1989):

This distinctive mode of progression is aptly termed concertina or rectilinear locomotion, and is also exhibited by certain species of snake. Amphisbaenids are equally worm-like on the surface too, hitching their body along in a straight line (and sometimes even looping vertically like a giant caterpillar), instead of undulating laterally like typical snakes and legless lizards. In the eyes of a layman, therefore, an amphisbaenid would certainly bear more of a resemblance to a worm than to most snakes or lizards—and a giant amphisbaenid would thus resemble a giant worm, which is how the nomads describe the death worm.

Conversely, although a few species of amphisbaenid can exceed two feet in length, none attains the size attributed to the death worm. Nor does any squirt fluid from its body in the manner described for this bewildering creature. In any case, whereas one assumes that if the death worm really does eject fluid (toxic or otherwise), it does so from its mouth; amphisbaenids tend to raise their tails, not their heads, toward potential predators. So unless the
allghoi khorkhoi
yields death via deadly defecation, this poses another problem in reconciling Mongolia’s most feared mystery beast with an amphisbaenid identity Its zoogeography does too, as the only known Asian amphisbaenids are confined to Asia Minor (the Middle East).

Moreover, none of the amphisbaenids currently recorded by science is venomous. However, as with certain caecilians, this has not prevented native superstition falsely bestowing such properties upon various species of amphisbaenid. One of North Africa’s representatives, for example, the sharp-tailed worm-lizard
Trogonophis wiegmanni
, is feared as an exceedingly poisonous creature by the local people, because they erroneously believe it to be the juvenile form of
Cerastes cornutus
—the genuinely venomous horned viper! Hence it is by no means impossible that if the death worm is an undescribed species of giant amphisbaenid, its venom-spitting ability is nothing more than a fanciful invention.

Earlier, I noted the bizarre claim by a Mongolian shepherd that in the Chongor Gobi there is a death worm of sorts that resembles salami but has a pair of wings at its rear end!

In reality, however, the shepherd’s claim is not quite so weird as it might initially seem. Is it possible that this “winged salami” is actually a worm-like reptile with only a single pair of legs, which, in a desert terrain, would probably be splayed or spatulate in shape for digging, and might therefore resemble wings? As it happens, three species of just such an animal are already recorded by science, and known as as ajolotes. Moreover, these amazing creatures
(Bipes
spp.) are actually amphisbaenids—the only amphisbaenids with legs.

Sporting long, exceedingly worm-like bodies but less than two feet in total length, all three ajolotes are endemic to the arid terrain of western Mexico (including Baja California). Each species has a single pair of small but well-formed front limbs with broad feet, positioned just behind their head. Indeed, these are often mistaken for ears by observers.