Small Dark Larvae with Black Heads

Dark Larvae with Black Heads
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A reader wrote to us earlier today about some small larvae with black heads that she has found on three occasions in her home. The reader referred to the creatures she found as “worms,” but they are definitely larvae, so we will proceed with our identification efforts accordingly. The reader describes the larvae as entirely black, and while this is definitely true of the heads of the larvae, the rest of their bodies appear to be more of a grayish color. (That’s why we simply called them “small dark larvae” in the title.) What are these small dark larvae with black heads?

First, here is one of the pictures the reader sent:

Dark Larvae with Black Heads

This isn’t the full image and there are larvae outside the frame of the shot, but we zoomed in on the heart of the image to give you a better view of what our reader is finding. The larvae appear to be in a moist environment, perhaps in a shower or sink, because you can see soap bubbles in the picture.

We are fairly sure we have written about this exact larvae twice before, first in an article about small white larvae with black heads and small white worms with black heads. (We use the word “worm” in one title to reflect the fact, and ruefully acknowledge, that almost everyone refers to the larvae they find as “worms.”) As you can see, both of these articles are about “white” larvae, but in both instances the creatures under examination were more like an off-white, and we think the larvae in the above image might be described as off-white as well, especially in better lighting.

In these previous articles, we suggested that our readers were dealing with moth fly larvae or Indian Mealmoth larvae (a type of waxworm). Overall, the creatures look slightly more like Indian Mealmoth larvae because of their distinct black heads, but the location in which they were found suggests they are actually moth fly larvae, which are found in moist places like shower drains and toilets. (Moth flies are often called “drain flies.”) As we noted, the larvae appear to be in some part of the house that gets wet because there are soap bubbles in the pictures sent by our reader. Moreover, even by larvae standards, moth fly larvae are extremely small (they are a few millimeters long), and the creatures pictured above seem to be particularly small. The camera is obviously zoomed in quite a bit in both of the images that were sent to us, yet the larvae are still small, smaller than half-inch (13-millimeter) Indian Mealmoth larvae, it seems.

In truth, though, it could be either larvae, and for that matter it could be neither larvae. There are hundreds of thousands of types of insect larvae, and a good portion of them look very similar, making definitive identification difficult. Regardless, our reader now has a couple of creatures to look into, and at the very least she knows she is finding larvae, not worms.

 

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AAW - Small Dark Larvae with Black Heads
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AAW - Small Dark Larvae with Black Heads
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A reader wrote to us earlier today about some small larvae with black heads that she has found on three occasions in her home.
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