But before we do that, let’s take a look at the picture the reader sent:

As you can tell, this doesn’t reveal much about the worm. However, as we said, the worm looks brown and small (although we can’t even be sure of its size because there is no scale in the picture), and that leaves us with a few guesses to offer.

The first is the moth fly larva, which we seem to write about on an almost weekly basis because we get a lot of questions about them. This suggests that they are found frequently, which in turn means that our reader very well might have found one; people find common creatures more often than they find uncommon ones, obviously. Moth fly larvae are quite small – they tend to be about a quarter of an inch in length (about six millimeters) – and they are often brown or grey in color. Moth flies and their larval form are found in moist places around the house. They are frequently found in or around drains (so much so, in fact, that they are often called “drain flies”) and pipes. If the reader found the creature pictured above in a place like this, perhaps she found a moth fly larva.

If the creature was found inside, but not in a moist place like a drain, it might be a carpet beetle larva. These creatures are also small and brown, just like the creature pictured above. They tend to be found in closets where they infest clothes or in the pantry where they infest food. Just like moth fly larvae, carpet beetle larvae are also quite common.

If the creature was found outside, the reader perhaps found a black soldier fly larva. The odds of this being the case would be especially high if the reader found the creature in a compost pile or in some other gathering of organic waste. (Black soldier fly larvae are actually recruited for composting operations because they convert high-nutrient waste into animal feed.)

Of course, any one of these creatures could be found inside or outside, so it is not the case that if our reader found the creature pictured above outside, it can’t be a carpet beetle larva, for example. However, we did list the areas where people seem to find these creatures most frequently (at least based on the questions we get), so that’s why we linked each creature to a particular location.

Maybe our reader found one of the larvae listed above, but we must emphasize the word “maybe.” All we have to work with is a picture that seems to depict some sort of small brown worm, so we have listed three common larvae that look like small brown worms. If anybody else has another idea of what the creature our reader found might be, please post a comment below.

First, let’s take a look at the clear pictures our reader sent, and then we’ll provide a little information about BSFL. Here is picture of a single black soldier fly larva:

And here are several, helpfully right next to an AA battery to give you an idea of their size:

We have actually written a fairly extensive article about BSFL before, so we’ll go easy on the details in this article. (But please do check out the other article for a more thorough treatment of the subject if you are so inclined.)

Black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens) belong to the family Stratiomyidae, which is composed of about 1,500 species, although they are all called “soldier flies” (at least by those of us who aren’t scientists). Although black soldier flies are common, most people know of them because of their larval form, which is what our reader found. BSFL are primarily known because they serve two helpful functions, both of which have to do with feeding animals. First, as part of a particular type of composting operation, BSFL are able to convert high-nutrient waste into animal feed. Only BSFL are used for this type of composting. When most people set up a compost bin, they attempt to convert their leftover organic waste into fertile soil, a process that is best accomplished with the help of red worms.

BSFL are also commonly fed to animals, like reptiles, or in our reader’s case, chickens. (As an interesting side note, we once received a bizarre question from a reader asking if he could safely fry up some Phoenix Worms and eat them himself.) People actually breed BSFL for this exact purpose, harvesting only the larval form because the adults aren’t used for feeding. A particular type of BSFL was developed specifically as a feeder food by Dr. Craig Sheppard. It was the first feeder insect to be trademarked. Dr. Sheppard named his “product” the “Phoenix Worm,” but this term is often used to refer to BSFL in general.

To recap, our reader almost certainly found black soldier fly larvae, and he is lucky to have stumbled across a good source of food for his chickens.

For the sake of reference, you can check out the old article here:

Long, Thick, Black, and Spiky Caterpillars with White Dashes and an Orange Stripe

And here is a picture of the caterpillar that may be described in this article:

The reader who sent us this picture is from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, which is also the location of the reader who sent us the original question. According to the reader who sent us this photo, this caterpillar has been causing some problems. Over 100 of these caterpillars were discovered on a tree whose leaves have been destroyed by this creature.

Despite this additional information and the picture, and despite the considerable amount of time we spent trying to once again figure out what kind of caterpillar this is, we are simply stumped. We are able to find caterpillars that kind of look like the one above – like, for instance, the larval form of the Nyctemera annulata (more commonly called the “Magpie Moth”), which is indeed a spiky, black caterpillar with orange stripes, but, as it turns out, it is only found in New Zealand and Australia – but we have found no satisfying matches. This is frustrating, but not entirely unexpected: as we have pointed out before, there are many tens of thousands of different kinds of caterpillars, so it is extremely hard to accurately identify any given caterpillar we come across.

However, knowledge is often best discovered by groups, so if any reader has any information about this caterpillar, please post a comment below for others to see. We can’t always answer our readers’ questions (caterpillars are always particularly difficult), but we are at least able to provide a platform for questions to be asked and answered by other readers.

Horsehair worms are definitely one of the more bizarre worms you can come across because of their extraordinary body dimensions. Horsehair worms can be very long, regularly reaching lengths of about a foot (and in rare cases they can be almost three times as long), yet they are extremely skinny, generally no wider than the lead in a mechanical pencil. Here is a nice photo (which even includes a ruler!) that the reader submitted along with his question:

Basically, horsehair worms look like the hairs that form horses’ tails. Long ago, people actually thought that horsehair worms were horse hairs that had come alive. This is of course not true, but it gives you a good idea of just how much these worms resemble horse hairs. (For another picture of these strange looking creatures, check out the reader-submitted picture in this article about horsehair worms.)

Horsehair worms are nematodes (which are also known as roundworms) that are parasitic. They prey on several different insects, like grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, and cockroaches. Horsehair worms are able to enter insects because they (the insects) consume the larvae of horsehair worms, which are hidden in small cysts on certain types of vegetation. An insect will eat this vegetation, as is their habit, and in so doing they ingest the larvae. Once inside the insect, the larvae slowly begin to grow by absorbing the nutrients that the host insect consumes. Horsehair worms will stay inside the insects they infect for varying lengths of time, generally around four to twenty weeks. After this period of growth, the horsehair worm will emerge from the insect, often through its mouth, but this only occurs if the insect is near water. This is why our reader found a horsehair worm in his swimming pool. Presumably, an insect with a horsehair worm was near the pool, and this prompted the horsehair worm to exit the insect’s body. Not surprisingly, insects that are afflicted with horsehair worms tend to die because of the parasitic worm’s presence, although insects can survive if a horsehair worm exits their body before fully maturing.

Since our reader found a horsehair worm in his swimming pool, which people presumably swim in, we should note in closing that these worms are nothing to worry about. Horsehair worms infect neither humans nor pets, and our reader could safely scoop one out of his swimming pool with his bare hand. They are actually beneficial to have around if you don’t want to encounter as many household pests like cockroaches.

So, to conclude, our reader found a horsehair worm, and they can actually be more of a blessing than a curse if their strange appearance doesn’t weird you out too much.

First, let’s take a look at the very cool pictures our reader sent. Here is one:

And here is another:

Unfortunately, identifying caterpillars is extremely difficult, even with good photos of them. Caterpillars are the larval form of moths and butterflies, which means there are as many species of caterpillars as there are moths and butterflies. Moths and butterflies belong to the order Lepidoptera, which is composed of about 175,000 different species. For obvious reasons, this makes correctly picking the species of caterpillar pictured above more than challenging.

We began our search using the caterpillar identification guide, an extremely helpful resource to which we always try to point our caterpillar-finding readers. However, the database is limited, and even after combing through several different possibilities we were not able to find any species that matched the caterpillar pictured above. The caterpillar above kind of looks like the Yellow Striped Armyworm (Spodoptera ornithogalli), a caterpillar that is commonly found in the eastern United States, but the match is far from perfect. However, given the similar features, perhaps the creature our reader found is related to the armyworm. Alas, we don’t have any other specific possibilities to offer. However, we are always open to getting reader comments with identification suggestions, so please provide your thoughts if you think you have an idea of what this caterpillar might be.

One thing that we can say about the caterpillar is that it appears to have fake eyes; that is, it has spots on its body that appear to be eyes, even though they don’t actually function as eyes. These distinct patterns are believed to be a defense mechanism. A caterpillar that is otherwise harmless can appear to be a creature that isn’t harmless (like, say, a snake) to ward off predators (e.g., birds). This is one of many defense mechanisms that caterpillars use. Others caterpillars protect themselves by blending into their surrounding and some have spikes (setae) that will detach and irritate a predator’s skin, to name two of many possibilities.

We wish we could precisely identify the brown, striped caterpillar our reader found, but given how many different caterpillars there are, we simply cannot in this case. Again, though, readers are invited to share their suggestions.

First, it is only proper that we include a picture of the creature up front so you can share in our discomfort. Do not scroll down if you’re eating something, or if you are in general squeamish about worms and similar creatures. Here it is:

See what we mean? It’s not a pleasant sight, and this thing could easily play a starring role in any number of horror films. Anyway, what might it be?

We have never seen anything quite like this before, which of course makes us less certain about what this thing might be. However, two possibilities come to mind, neither of which are worms. The first is that this creature is some sort of leech. There are around 700 types of leeches, and their taxonomy is complicated and currently in need of a better organizational scheme (as is the case with many organisms – taxonomy is fluid). However, there are types of leeches that are currently classified as “Arhynchobdellida,” which is an order (at least for now). Many of the species of leeches in this order are “jawed,” which mean they have teeth, often many hundreds of teeth that are quite sharp (not unlike the creature above). However, leeches in this order tend to have a tripartite jaw, whereas the creature above has four rows of teeth. Many other leeches have a round mouth, which doesn’t quite match the mouth of thing in the picture. Still, the creature our reader is curious about could very well be a leech of some sort.

The only other possibility we were able to find is linked to an unfortunate medical problem faced by an Australian couple that was reported by a number of news outlets. The couple’s bodies were being eaten by “tiny worms with teeth,” and according to some reports they suffered this lamentable fate because they were infected with “gnathostomiasis larvae.” From what we’ve gathered, this means that the couple was being attacked by either the Gnathostoma spinigerum or Gnathostoma hispidum (or technically the larval form of either), which are both nematodes (round worms). Both of these creatures attack vertebrates, which become infected after eating contaminated food (like fish) or drinking contaminated water.

Since both of these are, in the loose sense of the phrase, “worms with teeth,” and the picture above appears to depict some sort of “worm” with teeth, perhaps it is a type of leech, or it might also be a Gnathostoma spinigerum or Gnathostoma hispidum. In any case, we do know it’ s creature we hope to avoid.

If any of you readers has an alternate suggestion for what this might be, by all means please drop us a comment!

Before explaining our rational, let’s take a look at the reader’s picture. It’s always nice to know what we’re talking about right from the start.

As you can see, the creatures pictured above are a yellowish, white color, which is to say they are the color of maggots. Although it’s hard to figure out precisely how large these creatures are without some sort of scale in the picture, they seem small. (The picture is somewhat blurred, which perhaps means that the camera is zoomed in pretty far.) Maggots are in fact quite small, generally around an eighth to a quarter of an inch in length. They move in wiggling motion, which is one reason they are commonly mistaken for worms. (Although, as we are fond of pointing out, the word “worm” is not a scientifically precise term, as it refers to an obsolete taxon. There is, however, an everyday sense of “worm,” and maggots generally wouldn’t be covered by this term.)

So, what are maggots? They are the larvae -i.e., the immature form – of the common housefly. Before maturing into their adult form, maggots feed on organic waste, like decayed food. For this reason, they are often found in moist, unsanitary places, and of course some of these places could be around one’s house. If you want to get rid of maggots, the best approach is simply to thoroughly clean places that are conducive to maggot life. Some places are inevitably unsanitary, like trash cans, so these should be sealed so that houseflies cannot lay their eggs (which of course mature into maggots) in them.

It’s of course possible that we are mistaking the creature pictured above for maggots, but everything seems to point to this answer. The creatures in the picture look like maggots, and it’s not at all uncommon to find maggots around the house. We’re also quite familiar with maggot-related questions because we receive them all the time. You might call us reluctant experts on the subject, although ‘expert’ in the “lots of experience” sense, not in the academically trained sense.

Despite our best effort to find information, we simply do not know what kind of creature our reader found. However, since we were sent a picture of it, we will include that in this post, and invite our readers to email us if they have ideas for what this worm, caterpillar, or other creature may be. If we receive a good suggestion, we’ll update this article to reflect our reader’s suggestion. For what it’s worth, the reader said the creature was found on a tree that is called a “perumaram,” which is evidently a Tamil word. Tamil is a language spoken in some parts of India, as well is in Sri Lanka and Singapore, so perhaps the creature was found in this area of the world.

In any case, here is the creature in question:

Just because we do not know exactly what this creature is does not mean that we cannot say a few helpful things about it. First, we can say that this creature would appear not to be a worm, but rather a caterpillar, which is the larval form of a moth or butterfly. Although “worm” is actually a fairly vague term scientifically speaking (it refers to an obsolete taxon), meaning it is hard to say exactly what a worm even is, generally the word refers to creatures that burrow in the ground. The archetypal worm is the earthworm, of which there are several different species. So, the type of creature our reader found would generally not be referred to as a “worm.” Again, it looks more like a caterpillar, which tend to be much more multicolored than your average worm. (For the record, because we think it’s caterpillar, we searched Discover Life’s very helpful caterpillar identification guide, but we could find no species of caterpillar that look like the creature pictured above. However, we always like to point this resource out to our readers.)

If the reader did in fact find a caterpillar, one thing we can say about it is that it is likely not harmful to humans. In general, humans can safely interact with caterpillars, which always comes as welcome news to parents of children the world over. If caterpillars do cause problems, it generally involves skin irritation. Many caterpillars look poisonous to their predators – this is one of their defense mechanisms – but this doesn’t mean they are in fact poisonous. Regardless, we don’t recommend eating caterpillars.

Unfortunately, we can’t say much else about the creature our reader found, but if anybody out there would like to submit their suggestion as to what it might be, please do so!

Helpfully, the reader sent us a picture:

As we mentioned, we suspect that the reader is dealing with some type of larvae, not a worm, and to the reader’s credit, she never claimed she saw worms, but merely “worm type creatures.” What type of larvae? Like most of the answers we provide, we can’t be certain, but we think she has come across the larvae of moth flies, which are quite common. Moth flies – also called “drain flies,” “filter flies,” and “sewer flies” – tend to be a dark gray color. They are commonly found in bathrooms, particularly around the drains (hence the moth’s alternative names); indeed, they can be found around drains anywhere in your house, and a few other places as well (mostly places that come into contact with water).

Moth flies are of course the source of moth fly larvae, and the latter are our real concern in the present context. Like the adult form they grow into, moth fly larvae are generally found around drains. They are also commonly found in pipes, but the average person wouldn’t observe them there because, well, they are in pipes. Basically, the larvae are attracted to moist places, so this is where you will find them. Why our reader is finding them in the laundry room is something we can’t answer. Is the laundry room damp? Are there drains in this room? We don’t know, but if there are moist places in the laundry room, then too there can be moth fly larvae.

These larvae tend be about a quarter of inch long, and they are often a brownish color. This description seems to match the picture above, although we aren’t sure what kind of coin is featured in the picture, meaning we can’t be sure how long the creatures are. The good news for our reader is that moth fly larvae do not bite or sting. The bad news is that they can carry a lot of bacteria on them because of where they like to dwell, and of course certain types of bacteria can be harmful to humans. So, finding moth larvae is not a catastrophic problem, but you do want to get rid of them.

How do you get rid of them? Mostly by preventative measures. The reader insists that she keeps her house very clean, and we have no reason to doubt her, but perhaps she hasn’t been focusing her cleaning efforts on the right areas (i.e., drains and other moist areas). All these areas should be thoroughly scrubbed to destroy the moth fly’s breeding ground. It is also a good idea for our reader to eliminate moisture to the extent that she can by, for example, fixing leaky sinks and opening windows when people in the house shower. Finally, our reader should make sure that doors and windows in her house are sealed (screens are good for this), as this will help keep moth flies out of her house.

We hope this helps our reader deal with her moth fly larvae problem, assuming she is in fact dealing with moth fly larvae. It seems fairly likely that she is, but, alas, we can’t be sure.

First, the picture:

Although we can’t be certain, the creature pictured above appears to be quite small. There is not an object in the picture that serves as a scale, but we would guess that worm to the right is no more than a half an inch or so in length. What is perplexing is that the creature to the left is much smaller, but only with respect to its length, and its body seems to have many of the same characteristics as the larger worm. Is the creature to the left a complete organism, or is it merely a part of some larger worm (or whatever the case may be)? We simple don’t know.

Although we have been casually referring to the creature our reader found as a “worm,” there is a good chance that it isn’t a worm at all. Readers almost always write to us asking about worms, but in many cases – indeed, probably most cases – they are actually encountering caterpillars (i.e., the larvae of moths or butterflies) of one sort or another. Moreover, it is very common to find caterpillars in or around your home (although we don’t know where the pictured creature was found, alas), so we think there is a decent chance the photo above is of some sort of caterpillar (or other type of larvae; caterpillars are the larval form of moths or butterflies, but of course there are other types of larvae). Also, worms are often found outside, especially in the garden or yard, and they tend to be bigger than (our approximation) of the size of the creature our reader photographed.

What kind of larvae did the reader find? There are always two possibilities that immediately come to mind, both of which we have written about on multiple occasions. The first is the moth fly larvae, which tend to be brown with distinct dark lines that run horizontally across their bodies, a phenotype that lines up well with the creature pictured above. Furthermore, it is very common to find moth fly larvae – we get reader questions about them all the time – so that lends more plausibility to the moth-fly-larvae hypothesis. Moth fly larvae, as well as their adult form (regular moth flies, of course), are often found in damp places, like near drains or pipes. If our reader found the creatures in such an area, we’d say there is a fairly good chance he found moth fly larvae.

The creature above might also be of carpet beetle larvae. Carpet beetle larvae are also a brownish color, and they have stripes on their body that are a pale color. Again, this description fairly well matches the pictured creature above. (How can it be that larvae with dark stripes and pale stripes both match the pictured creature? Simply because we don’t know what part of the body coloring is technically the stripes. Is it the dark bands or the pale stripes between them?) Carpet beetle larvae are also quite common, and they can be found all over the house. They often infest clothes in your closet or food in your pantry. So, if the reader found his creatures in one of these areas, perhaps he is dealing with carpet beetle larvae.

We don’t know what the small brown worms are in the picture above, but there is a good chance they aren’t worms at all. Instead, they may be moth fly larvae or carpet larvae, but that is all we can say.