While we don’t usually post about parasites that infect humans, we are posting about this, including a link, so that people can point to this story as proof that yes, people have parasitic ‘worms’ of all sorts infecting them. Medical editor Melissa Davey wrote an “article on a live worm that was found inside a woman’s brain“. The worm was a roundworm, one of Earth’s most simple creatures. There are many species of parasitic roundworms that can be contracted in various ways, but this particular discovery was a first. The species of roundworm they found inside the woman’s brain was a species normally found in pythons, not humans.

“I found a dozen of these on my sidewalk, what type of worm are these?” asks this reader in their submission regarding the long, white, tangled worms pictured below. No further context is provided, but we do have to point out that the photos our reader sent in are just fantastic: it is this level of quality that lets us, as well as our other readers, more easily identify the organisms in the photo. It helps us identify the creatures faster, and it helps other readers identify the worms they might be dealing with. In our reader’s case, we think these could be roundworms or horsehair worms, though given the nondescript nature of the worms’ bodies, it is hard to tell for certain.

In the human world, matters of gender and sex are topical and have been debated for many years, but it seems in the world of worms, they simply do not care. One such mascot of this is a new species of worm discovered in California which has three sexes.

Death is one of the greatest mysteries of life; we grieve it, we run from it, and many are trying to solve it. Surprisingly enough, studies into the process of death in worms have given us a lot of insight into how death might work for humans as well.

It is not uncommon for us to receive submissions from readers who have been on vacation and have come home to discover that they are infested with some kind of parasite. Naturally, we sympathize with any of our readers who have ever experienced something like this, and thus we wanted to write this article in order to give some basic tips to our readers on how to prevent something like this happening to them.