AS THE WORM TURNS

It looks like a big worm - but has teeth, tentacles and a pseudo penis

- Nick Baker's

IT WAS SOFT, RUBBERY AND LUBRICIOUS, a humongous earthworm to the untrained eye.

I was pretty happy with my find until the joy of the moment was momentarily ruined when the 'worm' turned. It opened its mouth and sank its teeth into me. “Ow! It bites!” I didn't expect a mouth, let alone one lined with teeth. But it seems there's nothing typical about caecilians. That creature making a squirming getaway into the swampy vegetation by my feet is one of the oddest and most overlooked of all amphibians.

Say 'amphibian' and most folk think of frogs, toads and salamanders, the mostly leggy, lively, surface-living orders of their class. The secret caecilians, in contrast, are often forgotten, remaining hidden beneath the litter and soil and in the swampy waters of the world's warmer and wetter places. A habit that means the 220-odd (in more ways than one) species are rarely seen by anyone but the most determined.