“I found this in my apartment and cannot seem to find anything online that looks similar”, writes Heather in her submission regarding the clump of black and translucent matter pictured below. “Any idea what it could possibly be?” Now, we are not sure if our reader is referring to the black, hair-like objects, or the translucent, ovate objects that seem to be tangled up in the ‘hair’. In any case, we will provide options for what either object could be.

With regard to the stringy, black organisms, these could potentially be horsehair worms. Horsehair worms are infamous parasites, but their reputation is undeserved. Despite only infecting insects, horsehair worms have become somewhat of an internet myth. Many have claimed to become infected by a horsehair worm and experienced awful symptoms. The truth is that there have been a handful of medically-recognized and documented human ‘infections’ of horsehair worms. We put ‘infections’ in inverted commas because they have not really been infections, not in the true sense of the word. The only symptoms these humans experienced were a result of having a live worm inside them (eg: vomiting the worm). And these people only contracted horsehair worms because they ingested insects which were infected with the worm.

Now, if our reader is actually wondering about the translucent objects in the picture, then we suppose the black objects really are just pieces of hair. When it comes to these, clear objects, we think they are most likely a cluster of insect eggs. We can’t tell just by looking at them what species of insect they belong to, but given that they are eggs, Heather does not really need to worry about them. We doubt they are horsehair worm eggs, as horsehair worms lay their eggs in water. To deal with these, we recommend just scooping them onto a dustpan and moving them outside. Of course, if she is curious about what they are, she could incubate them if she wishes to. We recommend putting them in a container with air holes and placing it somewhere that has access to sunlight, but is not placed in direct sunlight. We cannot know if those are the most favorable conditions for the eggs, since we do not know the species of the organism, but that is our safest bet for hatching them.

To conclude, we are not entirely sure what Heather found in her apartment, especially considering that we don’t exactly know what part of the photo she is asking about. The black organisms could be horsehair worms, and the white objects might be insect eggs. We hope nonetheless that we were able to help to some extent, and we wish Heather the very best!

Summary

Article Name

Clump of Matter Could be Horsehair Worms and/or Eggs

Description

"I found this in my apartment and cannot seem to find anything online that looks similar", writes Heather in her submission regarding the clump of black and translucent matter pictured below. "Any idea what it could possibly be?" Now, we are not sure if our reader is referring to the black, hair-like objects, or the translucent, ovate objects that seem to be tangled up in the 'hair'. In any case, we will provide options for what either object could be.

Author

Worm Researcher Anton