The other day a reader sent us one of the most notable messages we have ever received, and by “one of the most notable” we mean “one of the most outrageously brief,” and by “message” we mean “unpunctuated sentence fragment.” Here is the question, as it were, quoted in all its cryptic glory: “what looks kinda like a earth worm but shorter and are aggressive.” That statement, sans the period, is all we received from the reader, and then he was off like a thief in the night. What indeed looks like an earthworm but is shorter and aggressive?

For obvious reasons, this is a difficult question to answer. The fact that it only partially resembles a question – it starts like one, but then it kind of tapers off into an ungrammatical mist – is the least of our concerns. The larger problem is that we have basically no information to work with. We know the creature is shorter than an earthworm, but this tells us essentially nothing, given that earthworm sizes vary so widely. It is probably safe to assume the reader wasn’t thinking about some of the huge earthworms that exist, but still, “shorter than an earthworm” is not a very helpful measurement.

We also know the creature is aggressive, but again, we don’t really know what this means. Not many worms, bugs, or whatever our reader might be talking about are really “aggressive” in any true sense. For example, even something that bites or stings people or other animals isn’t necessarily “aggressive.” They might deploy these tactics only as a last-resort defense mechanism. The other issue with the word “aggressive” is that one must ask to whom or what is the creature being aggressive? We have written an article explaining that, for example, hammerhead worms are not harmful to humans or pets, but these worms are still in a sense “aggressive” because they are carnivores that eat earthworms. (They are in some ways brutally aggressive when you consider how they eat their victims – see the article just linked to.)

Given our inability to decipher any concrete facts from our reader’s message, there is really not much we can say to him. Just for the sake of saying something, it’s conceivable our reader is talking about centipedes. In general, a centipede would be shorter than an earthworm, and unlike the closely related millipede, centipedes are predatory and can bite humans and other animals. They are also quite fast, so we suppose this might make them seem more aggressive. However, this is obviously a suggestion that is maximally tentative and subject to revision upon even the faintest glimmer of additional information.

• 
•