“What is this?” asks Cyndi in her submission regarding the long, black worm with a gray striped down its back pictured below. “It’s fascinating! I found it crawling on my window and along the window sill. It lifts its head moving forward. It almost appears to have eyes. It only moves forward (front is left to right). I appreciate the help!” Based on the fantastic photo Cyndi sent us, we think she has found a New Guinea flatworm. As their name suggests, this species of flatworm is endemic to New Guinea (the island off the coast of Australia), and is considered an invasive species in other countries. Besides concerns about how their presence will disrupt the biodiversity in the habitats they are introduced to, New Guinea flatworms do not pose much of a threat to humans, despite popular anti-flatworm rhetoric.

“This worm was crawling up my shower window”, writes PG in her submission regarding the beige-colored, worm-like critter pictured below. “I think it resembles the invasive hammerhead flatworm but does not have the crescent moon-shaped head. Do you know what type of worm it was? I’m located in southeast Texas.” From the photo, we cannot determine a specific identification, though we agree with PG that it could be a flatworm, as there are species of flatworms with this coloration. We do not agree that it is a hammerhead, for the very reason that PG gives: it does not have the eponymous hammerhead.

“Have you ever seen one of these?” asks this reader in Florida about the gray worm pictured below. “It was quickly decomposing and it had goo outside that was melting away”, he adds.

“On the carport we found a dead worm: thinking it may be a hammerhead??!” exclaims this reader in her submission, which is unfortunately not accompanied by a photo of the worm she is referring to. The worm was found when our reader was vacationing in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

“What the heck is this?” asks this reader about the brown, striped organism pictured below. “It’s easily 10-to-12-inches long, and found in Greenville, South Carolina.”

“I’m seeing these worms daily in my house,” says this reader about the creatures with “flat” bodies of around 2-2.6-inches and “thicker head[s]”. Our reader is growing uncomfortable as she fears the worms may enter her body and she asks for any suggestions we can provide as to how to prevent their entry into her home.

“I found hundreds of these worms on my covered walkway,” says this reader about the glossy creatures seen in the photographs below. The “specimens” are about 5-6cm (approximately 2 inches) long, “very dark brown to black”, have “no obvious mouth parts at the moving end” and “seem to survive fine in water.”

“I found a dead, black hammerhead worm in a shiny, clear substance in my garage. Does this worm secrete this substance?” asks this reader in her query. The photo she sent us displays a long, thin worm lying in a pool of the aforementioned shiny substance.

“My neighbor found this worm attached to her dog, wrapped around its leg,” says this reader about the creature displayed below. The worm is very long, black in color (with a gray underside), and appears to be a flattened, rather than tubular, shape.

Two hammerhead worms were found on this reader’s patio in Oak Ridge, Tennessee within the span of two years. The first one is very long and black in color, while the second one is shorter, with a beige-brown body.