Pat Dollard

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News.AU:

ARMED with explosives, two men are heading to Mongolia’s desert to find the fabled acid-spitting and lightning-throwing Mongolian death worm.

The worm- allegedly found in the country’s Gobi Desert- has never been documented but locals strongly believe it exists.

The worm- about 1.5m long- apparently jumps out of the sand and kills people by spitting concentrated acid or shooting lightning from its rectum over long distances.

New Zealand resident and journalist David Farrier will spend two weeks trying to verify the worm’s existence.

He and cameraman Christie Douglas will make a documentary about their adventure.

Farrier said it was also one of the mythical creatures that had a better chance of being real.

He said he was interested in the death worm because it was one of the most outrageous creatures that were rumoured to exist.

Rumours could inflate the reputation of things such as the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot, but sparsely populated Mongolia was not a place where rumours were going to propagate, Farrier said.

“If a Mongolian says they have seen a big worm-like creature out in the desert they haven’t really got any reason to lie,” he said.

A number of experts have dismissed the worm’s existence, putting it down as a rumour.

“I think it won’t be a worm, obviously a worm can’t survive in a desert. I’d say it would be some sort of snake that’s not meant to be there. It’s very out of place and a bit new,” Farrier said.

Farrier said there been up to four unsuccessful expeditions searching for the death worm in the last 100 years, which had used night vision goggles to look for the worm.

However, the New Zealand team planned to bring the worm to the surface with explosives, as it is said to be attracted to tremors.

Farrier put his chances of finding the worm at between 5 and 15 per cent.

“They are high for a ridiculous creature like the death worm but the area I am going to is a very specific place in the southern Gobi where all the sightings have been,” he said.

“I have no intention of grabbing it, capturing it, stuffing it, or anything like that. I just want to prove its existence and if I can get it on film, that’s all I need to do.”