“Is this an inch worm or a bookworm (if that exists)?” asks this reader in his submission concerning the tiny, white worm-like creature pictured below. “It had legs (maybe 4-6) and as shown in the picture I found it in my book.”

In a series of short, descriptive sentences, a reader recently wrote us asking if any worms eat leather. The reader was in a secondhand store and came across a leather dog leash that looked as though it had been eaten by small worms. There were tunnels in the leash, possibly caused by some worm or worm-like creature, which made it look a “bit like furniture that was attacked by woodworm.” Overall, the leash lacked the structure of leather, however this is to be conceived, which made the leash look like a “uniform grey mass.”

The larvae of cigarette beetle are cinnamon-colored and it has a taste for rare manuscripts. It also eats drugs, leather, spices, dried vegetable matter, herbarium collections, cornhusk dolls, chocolate, breakfast foods, and other types of books.

The bookworm (a/k/a “book worm”) which is the crawly one isn’t really a worm at all. The bookworm which is human also isn’t a worm, but both types of bookworms devour books.