Most animals called "worms" are invertebrates, but the term is also used for the amphibian caecilians and the slowworm Anguis, a legless burrowing lizard. The name stems from the Old English word wyrm.
In biology, "worm" refers to an obsolete taxon, vermes, used by Carolus Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck for all non- arthropod invertebrate animals, now seen to be paraphyletic. Free-living worm species do not live on land but instead live in marine or freshwater environments or underground by burrowing. Various types of worm occupy a small variety of parasitic niches, living inside the bodies of other animals. Worms vary in size from microscopic to over 1 metre (3.3 ft) in length for marine polychaete worms (bristle worms) 6.7 metres (22 ft) for the African giant earthworm, Microchaetus rappi and 58 metres (190 ft) for the marine nemertean worm (bootlace worm), Lineus longissimus. Worms are many different distantly related bilateral animals that typically have a long cylindrical tube-like body, no limbs, and no eyes (though not always).
White tentacles of Loimia medusa, a spaghetti worm
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