Worms what work they do!

i had a fairly large container with just soil(straight from the ground) for about 2-3 years i've grown various plants in, beans tomatoes etc. i have emptied it to move it (while at it i've added some manure etc) and i noticed that from the soily top layer on the surface, this quickly faded into a fibrious layer at the bottom(tangled with roots), this is a very different substance i put into the container 3 years ago. ive added straw to the top, would the worms have eaten this and relocated it at the bottom as well as the plants roots and leaves?

Strongly suspect they did it.
Did you see the programmes about Darwin 4-6 months back?
He spent quite some time studying worms and concluded that they were probably the most important single thing in the garden soil and agriculture.

If you have a patch of ground with stones on the top, even quite large ones, he found that over time, say 15 years, all the stones slowly disappeared under the ground ownig to the actions of worms.

They drag leaves down as food, and in one TV experiment it was shown that they could identify the pointy bit and would drag leaves down by that bit, so making it easier for them.

but towards the top was more like the soil i had added before and towards the bottom was much more fibrous, i only added stuff to the top of the soil, so the plants wouldnt move it themselves, something else must have possibly the worms? they are worms in the containers, worms seem to love to walk from a small patch of soil in the garden to the container(its about 1ft away, if even that)

they do that in my compost bin as well Savbo - loads of them I have to scoop them up and drop them back in as I can't get the lid back on without squishing some. I've found worms getting into my potato growing sacks when Ive used nothing but fresh compost from a bag. How they get there is beyong me.

I love worms natures lil helpers, they work for us...for free
apparently worms perfer there food on the surface rather than being turned in lol, which makes sense seeing as if you walking to the fridge you dont want to be dodging other food stuffs.

My chooks galump and flutter at full speed (so ridiculous to watch  ) when they see I'm carrying the kitchen waste bucket. They know I'm on my way down to the compost daleks and they'll get the slugs and wriggly red worms plastered on the underside of the lid! (And I get messy fingers!)  Them there worms can get anywhere......