In just one teaspoon of soil, there can be more microbes than there are people on the planet. That’s before you even count the miles of fungal hyphae also living there. 

The microbes, fungi and creatures that live in soil do the important work of eating dead plants and animals. There are also some soil bacteria that eat actual rock. It’s this array of soil-living organisms that enables energy to flow between rocks, animals and plants, and they play a vital role in the carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, which underpin life on the planet. 

In fact, this blanket of life supports everything on our mother earth, including us, so it’s worth getting to know the creatures that crawl, creep, wiggle and weave their way through our soils.