Do worms actually eat dead bodies?

Question

The saying "Ending up as worm food".

DO worms eat your dead body, or is it your body decomposing with the earth, which will eventually become worm food?

Answer 1

Worms don't form out of nowhere. That's what they used to think like fifteen hundred years ago. The "worms" in your trashcan are maggots, the larval stage of flies, and they are there either because there were fly eggs on the trash when it went into the can, or flies found it and laid eggs on it after it was in there. Maggots will eat an exposed corpse, (and very effectively) but earthworms are an entirely different kind of animal. They wouldn't eat the corpse itself, but they would definitely eat the byproducts of decomposition, like all the microorganisms that flourish on decaying organic matter. Since there would be an abundance of those around a decaying corpse, the worms would be drawn there, and it would be an easy assumption that it was the worms were doing all the eating. They're really just the final clean-up crew.