It sounds like you are anthropomorphising these beings: an ant has no conception of the wider colony as we would; the ‘non-subservience’ of a spider to another being does not make it more aware of death; a worm is not more intelligent thank a spider.

If you want the closest experience to what one of these beings ‘feel’ - go pee and tap your foot on the floor, their level of experience probably surmounts to no more than an fraction, perhaps an equivalent, of these sensations combined - without the emerging hierarchy of confluent memories, heuristics, ego impressions, saliences, considerations and sensations which constitute a few moments of your conscious experience, that would ever allow for the word ‘understanding’ to be used for such existential concepts as meaning, life and death, and survival. The brain in a single second is capable of firing hundred billion neurones; it can take a genuine while to actually understand any existential concept properly.

Any three of these is probably as equal in their intelligence as one of those hoovers which automatically responds to dirt in the house. I have met people of thirty and forty years of age, who have yet to fully come to terms with the reality of their eventual demise; some of the most intelligent animals - dogs, pigs, cats, apes, dolphins - are certainly not actually aware of it. I thoroughly doubts an ant, worm or spider have even the slightest clue what any of your worms are referring to, other than reacting to light signals which illicit certain responses.