“I’m based in the UK and found this in my bathroom”, writes Angela in her submission regarding the grayish, ovate creature pictured below. “I’ve found three so far and cannot find out what it is. My bathroom has a ledge away from the water source; one was found wiggling on the tiled ledge, and one was in an even more curious location: inside a clean container with some serialized items. The one pictured came from a plastic tray which I was cleaning out and, to be fair, this tray was quite dirty and had a pattern with ridges. It was about 4mm in length and didn’t appear to mind water. Is it a drain fly larva? I’ve posted how it moved on Reddit, linked below. Many thanks!” To start with, we have linked the video below that she posted on Reddit, and it is quite an interesting video. It looks like the organism is underwater, and yet the way it contracts its body and moves forward looks like it is dragging itself across a solid surface, rather than swimming.

“We found this clung to the toilet bowl,” writes this reader in his submission regarding the strange-looking organism pictured below. “Not sure what it is, it’s clear and jellylike. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks.” We have to say that we have actually seen something like this submitted before by another reader, and it stumped just as much then as it does now. The center of the creature’s body seems to be transparent, while its bristles or segmentation (we are not sure what those appendages are) are visible, but only just. On top of that, at one end of its body, the appendages seem to break apart. We are curious to know how much our reader had to zoom in on the worm to get this picture.

“We found this clinging to the toilet bowl” begins this reader in his query about the “clear and jellylike” worm he discovered. According to our reader, this alien creature is approximately 1/2-inches long and is “almost completely clear”.

We received a question via the All About Worms Facebook page from a reader whose bristle worms have died in his aquarium. Actually, the worms didn’t just die, but “simultaneously combusted,” although presumably this can’t be taken too literally, as we don’t see how worms in a fish tank could be consumed by fire. The reader isn’t worried about the worms themselves, but he is concerned if the death of the bristle worms is a bad portent, spelling trouble for the rest of the tank. So, essentially, the reader wants to know what it means when the bristle worms in your aquarium die.

An enterprising reader recently wrote to us about the prospect of raising marine worms for commercial purposes. He was wondering if this is possible, and specifically mentioned creating a “bristle farm” (by which he presumably meant a farm for raising bristle worms, or polychaetes). The reader didn’t ask any specific questions about how this operation might be set up, so we won’t get into the specifics of setting up a marine worm farm that is designed to turn a profit. Instead, we will focus on the general feasibility of this project.