Can worms regrow if cut in two?

It is often said that when you chop a worm in two you do not kill it, but make two worms instead of one. Worms can regenerate very easily: by cutting off its tail a zoologist made a worm grow again forty times. Still, we should avoid cutting a worm in two deliberately: why mutilate it, even if it isn't very sensitive?

We should rather help it to avoid getting too dry or too hot. It is often in danger of dying as it crawls across scorched cracked ground looking for shade and moisture. The sticky mucus that helps it slide along dries up in the sun, and encloses it in an inflexible shell that prevents it from moving or breathing: it suffocates to death.

The earth-worm is not the only worm to swallow the earth into which it is burrowing. All burrowing worms do likewise. Many ringed sea worms hide in the sand or the mud at low-tide. The twirls of sand at the entrance to their holes show where they have gone.