A reader recently asked us an interesting question about worms on the sidewalk. The subject matter isn’t strange – lots of people wonder why worms come out on the sidewalk – but his focus was unusual. He wasn’t curious about the presence of the worms, but rather about the “black balls of dirt” that came along with them onto the sidewalk. The reader asked “what” he was finding, which seems fairly simple – black balls of dirt (or possibly worm castings) – so we suppose we should expand the scope of the question, covering the matter of why he is finding dirt on the sidewalk along with worms.

A reader wrote to us recently about an amazing and beautiful worm, or what is believed to be a worm, that he had found on his patio. In fact, both those adjectives were combined, making the worm, in the reader’s words, an “amazing beauty.” The worm, which is about an inch long, had a red head, white “puffs” on its back, and two large antennae. Given this worm’s aesthetic appeal, it is not surprising that the reader wanted to know what kind of worm it was.

We received a question recently about a worm that a reader found in his bathroom. More precisely, the worm was found in the “gunk” between the tub and sliding door. The reader actually said he “found a ‘worm’ in the bathroom,” which we call attention to only because of the reader’s use of scare quotes. The reader acknowledges that he might not have found a worm at all, and in fact he probably didn’t. The “worm” in the bathroom could be a larva (or something else – it’s hard to say, as you’ll see). The reader was wondering what he had found, and also if a mere cleaning could address the problem.

A reader recently wrote to us about, as the title of this article suggests, a small, brown worm with stripes on the counter. (The worm was on the bathroom counter, more precisely.) The reader sent pictures of the brown striped worm and was merely wondering what it is. She was very matter of fact in her email, not seeming particularly alarmed by the small worm, nor did she ask how to get rid of it, so we presume she is dealing with an isolated incident and not a recurring problem. (She did add the word “blah” after her short email, so she wasn’t altogether happy with finding the worm either.) So, we have a simple question before us: what is the small, brown, striped worm on the bathroom counter that our reader is finding.

We decided to title this article with more or less the exact wording of an email we recently received from a reader. She reported that her “catalpa worms have white spikey things all over them,” and she is wondering what is going on. Something is clearly amiss with her Catawba worms. (For the record, Catalpa worms are Catawba worms and vice versa, as the words “Catalpa” and “Catawba” are interchangeable). The reader asked no additional questions, so we will focus only on the white spiky things on the Catalpa worms. We won’t worry about general matters of identification, presuming our reader is definitely dealing with Catawba worms, and we also won’t worry about ways to rectify the problem, which may not be possible anyway.

A while back, a reader asked us which types of millipedes emit a horrible odor when threatened or stepped on. (Technically, the reader asked about “minipedes,” but we’ll assume this was a typo, unless they really are interested in knowing the nonexistent smell of an online ship that sells baby shoes in the UK.) In other words, which millipedes smell bad when threatened or attacked in some way. This is a simple enough question, but we’ll have to answer it in somewhat general terms because there are around 10,000 species in the Diplopoda class, which millipedes make up, so we of course can’t list every single millipede that smells bad (nor in truth do we know of all the millipedes that smell bad). So, we will focus on the following, more general question: why do millipedes smell bad?

A reader wrote to us a while ago to ask about worm she found on the beach. Actually, she didn’t really ask about a worm on the beach – she wasn’t particularly interested in the beach worm itself – but she did mention it bit her son. Presumably, this is what concerned her about the worm. Peculiarly, though, she didn’t ask us anything. She merely said she found a white worm on the beach (it might have been more of a tan color, adds the reader) and that it bit her son, which created a mark on his skin that is red and itchy. Nothing else is added to the email – not even a period. We are of course in the business of answering questions, and the reader submitted her question through our eternally popular “Submit a Question” feature, so we are compelled to supply some information about her situation. What is this worm on the beach? Is this beach worm even a beach worm at all? Are worms on the beach generally dangerous?

A reader recently submitted a question via the All About Worms Facebook page about a worm “coming out of the ground” in his garden. The most distinguishing characteristic of the worm is that it is “very thin, almost like nylon fish line,” and it moves in a “swaying motion.” The reader only asked if what he found is a type of worm, but we’ll do him one better by identifying the exact worm we think he found: a horsehair worm (occasionally spelled “horse hair worm”). Since horsehair worms are nematodes (roundworms), they are actually worms, not just creatures that everyday language, with its understandable but often frustrating contempt for scientific precision, has wrangled into the “worm category.”

Yesterday we received one of the simplest questions we have ever been sent. The reader submitted a photo of a creature and asked only if it is a centipede or millipede. There were no complicating factors, so he was basically looking for a one-word answer. We think our reader found a millipede, and in what follows we explain why. In doing so, we will outline the difference between centipedes and millipedes, providing a concise guide that will help you determine whether you have found a millipede or centipede.

We received a very interesting question recently about, essentially, parasitic worms that infect other worms. Most of us have heard of parasitic worms that infect other hosts, including humans, but are there parasitic worms that take worms themselves as their host? More broadly, the reader was wondering if there is any “example of a parasitic animal whose host is a worm,” so in addition to looking for parasitic worms that infect worms, we are also looking for any sort of parasite that takes a worm as a host.

A reader recently sent us a picture of a blue caterpillar with small black spikes on its back and large red spikes on its head. The blue, spiky caterpillar also appears to have two black eyes (even though these are actually not functional eyes, but eyespots, a defense mechanism some caterpillars use to scare away predators). The reader only sent the picture of the spiky, blue caterpillar and this deceptively simple question: “what is this?” Good question.

A reader wrote to us a while back about a long brown worm with black stripes that she found in a decaying stump. Fortunately, she sent us an excellent photo of the brown worm, which we were quickly able to identify as a hammerhead worm (sometimes understandably, but incorrectly, spelled “hammer head worm”). The reader was merely wondering what the long brown worm was, so we’ve technically already answered her question, but if we stopped writing now, we wouldn’t have a very satisfying article to read. So, below we supply some information about hammerhead worms, which includes the reader’s excellent picture.

A reader wrote to us recently about some worms that she found in her shower. As she notes, they look like earthworms, but they are “smaller and thinner.” The reader is uncertain how they ended up in her shower, but she offers some speculation: they might have come from the drain, or she might have brought them in herself, maybe in her hair, as she took a shower after taking a hike. Our reader is wondering what she found, and she is also wondering if she should be worried about the worms that turned up in her shower.

We received a puzzling question recently about some worms that our reader found in the hair of her cat. The worms (or whatever they are) have been caught in the cat’s hair on a couple of different occasions, and the reader is concerned that they might be harmful to her cat in one way or another. They might just be getting caught in the cat’s fur, posing no threat, but they also might be “something worse feeding off him [the cat].” The reader offers a lot of information and a picture, so we’ll try to make some sense of the situation with what we were presented with.

We recently received a question through the All About Worms Facebook page about “two red worms in the toilet bowl.” The worms were “10 cm long, thin, like one millimeter in diameter, and alive, even in the water, they were still moving.” The reader didn’t actually ask for an identification, but instead asked if the worms might be parasites. This is his main concern, and we will focus on this question, although the answer is of course tied to what exactly the reader found, so we’ll touch on the matter of identification as well. What might the red worm in the toilet be, and are they parasitic?

We received a question through the All About Worms Facebook page about red and orange caterpillars that a reader recently found on an apple tree. To call them “red and orange caterpillars” is at once insufficient and overreaching. It is insufficient because the creatures aren’t only red and orange; they have black heads and legs, and some orange parts of their bodies might just as easily be described as yellow. White hairs also cover their bodies, and they are striped lengthwise, from head to tail. We overreach, however, in claiming without explanation that these creatures are caterpillars. The reader identifies them as worms, so we must explain why we think they are instead caterpillars. This explanation is of course tied to the matter of identification, which is what the reader is wondering about, and to that topic we now turn.

We received an interesting question from a reader through the All About Worms Facebook page about a “greenish grey worm” that his cat found on his lawn. The worm (or probably larva) is “2-3 inches long and had rings around it so he looked like a bunch of inter-tubes stacked on each other.” However, the defining characteristic of the creature is that it made noise. The reader was wondering what kind of worm or larva he (or technically his cat) found.

A couple of days ago we received a question through the All About Worms Facebook page from a reader who recently moved into an apartment in Valencia, Spain. Unfortunately, his girlfriend has been waking up with bite marks that look like they might be the work of bed bugs. However, both the reader and an expert could find no trace of bed bugs in the apartment. This led our reader to speculate that he might have found carpet beetle larvae, as these larvae have small hairs that can cause skin irritation that look like bed bug bites, just as the reader noted. He sent us a few videos and asked us to comment on the matter.

A reader recently wrote to us about what appears to be a small larva that she found in her soup. (We mentioned a possible “worm” in the soup only because people so often call larvae “worms.”) The reader is wondering what she found, and she also asked if she should be concerned if she accidentally ate one. We’ll tackle each question in turn, suggesting a possible identification and then discussing eating larvae, both in general and as it relates to the reader’s specific circumstances.

A reader asked us through the All About Worms Facebook page about “white worms with yellow bottoms [that are] eating my Dogwood trees.” These white worms with yellow bottoms are very likely white larvae with yellow bottoms, so we’ll adjust our usage accordingly. The reader asked us for an identification, and we’ll largely limit ourselves to this specific matter to keep things short and simple.