“I found these worms under my plant pots in the balcony garden”, writes this reader in his submission regarding the clear worm with red entrails pictured below. “They are hair-thin and they move in water at a good speed with snake-like movement. When I took a picture and zoomed in I found they have dots at one end of the body — the tail end I would assume. They look really frail, thread-like alarmist hair like. Three-to-five centimeters (1.2-2-inches) long and there’s quite a few of them in wet places under plant pots, fallen leaf debris, etc, after two days of rain. I wanna know if these are parasitic. And how to kill these without killing my plants. I’m from Maldives.”

“Translucent, striped, microscopic, hairlike worms in Miami Beach apartment water faucets”, writes this reader in her submission regarding the array of organisms pictured below. “I had previously found this after bathing my dog with Septol. This nightmare never ends. Now I noticed they come from our faucets. What is going on? I’m so scared. Thanks for your help.” The first thing we want to bring attention to is our use of the phrase “array of organisms”; we do think our reader is actually dealing with multiple different organisms that are not necessarily related. For example, the yellowing, segmented worm-like creature pictured below looks to us like a fly larva (maggot). People can commonly get these during the summer as flies enter the home and lay eggs in one’s organic compost. The best way to tackle these is to consistently throw out compost and larvae in trash cans outside, keep one’s kitchen clean, and maybe buy fly traps if the issue is bad enough.

“What are these things?” asks this reader in his submission regarding the pink, translucent worm pictured below. “I live in Phoenix, AZ and these came out after very heavy rain. They washed up in the flooded water onto my patio. I have attached photos. Transparent and small, I photographed them with a toothpick for size reference. Thank you in advance.” To start with, we want to thank our reader for the excellent photo. We can see in such detail the minute physical characteristics, such as entrails visible through the worm’s clear skin, which is really helpful. Likewise, the context he provided is also super helpful. Both of these things together have led us to identify this worm as a tubificid worm.

“Came home after being away for a month to find a clump of long, thin, reddish-brown worms living in my downstairs toilet in water that looked dirty”, writes this reader in Southern California regarding the worms pictured below. “Didn’t note heads on the worms or segmentation. Any help would be appreciated!” To start with, we want to thank our reader for the great photo. It was thanks to this photo, as well as the context, that we have identified these as tubifex worms. Tubifex worms, otherwise known as tubificid worms, sewage worms, sludge worms, or bloodworms, are a marine species of worms that eat bacteria and organic debris in sediment.

“Just wondering what type of worm(s) these are?” asks this reader, who took this picture “from the end of [his] sewer cable whilst clearing an underground sewer […] at a house”. The worms he refers to are all writhing over each other in one big mass: they are purple in color, seemingly long and thin, and slimy-looking.

“What on Earth are these worms?” asks this reader, who found a batch of pinkish, dead worm-like creatures beside her kitchen sink. She has since cleaned the worms up and bleached her entire counter and sink.

When someone says ‘bloodworm’, it may not bring up the most pleasant of images if you have never seen one of these critters before; the word itself is somewhat creepy! This article will detail the various worms that fall under this umbrella term, and why they are not nearly as terrifying as their name makes them out to be.

Red, “free-moving, thread-like” worms of varying lengths were discovered in the bathroom of this concerned woman. She says they look “dangerous and unpredictable” given their speed, and worries that they might be parasitic to humans.

Tiny worms are being consistently found by this reader in his Arizona home. The worms in question appear to be tan in color, and are 1-inch in length, according to our reader.

A long red-striped worm was found by this concerned reader in the South East of the UK. She discovered the worm after she and her children came back from a holiday and used the toilet; she is worried that it may have come from one of them.

A “red, string-like” worm was found in the bathroom sink of this woman in East Texas. According to our “horrified” reader, the worm was “wiggling out of the overflow”, and she has never seen anything like it before.