“I noticed my solar sprinkler bucket was empty yesterday, so I filled it with fresh water. When I looked today, all these little black things were scooting around the bottom of the bucket”, writes this reader in her submission, which unfortunately does not include a photo. “When I move the sprinkler to see them, they scuttle under it again. Can’t get a good photo. The biggest one is about a quarter inch. They move like caterpillars but faster. Don’t know if they were nesting inside the sprinkler head or if they fell off the honeysuckle.” Since our reader did not send in any photos with her submission, nor did she describe them in much detail, we will say right off the bat that we will be unable to provide a certain or accurate identification.

A reader reached out to us about little black worm-like organisms that have suddenly appeared in her apartment. We think these creatures might be New Guinea flatworms or brahminy blind snakes, although they could be something else.

A reader asked us a little while ago about some small black worms he is finding on his property. The reader has an air conditioner that drips water onto his carport, which has a crack in it, and small black worms are crawling out of this crack to get to the water. The reader describes the worms as “solid black,” so evidently they don’t have stripes or any other distinguishing body marking. What are these small black worms in the water on the carport?

A while back, we received a short email from a reader about worms in beds that are small, striped, and black. (The worms are small, striped, and black, not the beds.) We say the email was merely “about” the tiny worms because it didn’t ask any sort of question – it simply offered a description (“very small” worms that are “black and stripes,” to use the reader’s unique phrasing) and nothing else. The reader also didn’t specify if she is finding the worms in her bed; indeed, she didn’t even indicate if she is finding them at all. She might just be curious about small, black worms with stripes in general. We presume the reader is hoping for us to identify the worm, so below we explore a few different possibilities.

We receive questions about a staggering variety of worms and other worm-like creatures, making our job as worm identifiers difficult (but also interesting). However, a lot of readers inquire about the same kinds of worms (or larvae), like black soldier fly larvae, which seems to come up all the time, most recently from a reader who found them on his porch. We receive questions about these “worms,” as reader’s often refer them (even though they aren’t actually worms), because black soldier flies (and especially their larval form) are common. We have to admit we sometimes like writing about what’s familiar. We are getting ahead of ourselves, however, because we aren’t entirely certain our reader found black soldier fly larvae. So, let us first tell you what our reader found and show you the best picture he submitted, and then we’ll explain why we think he found black soldier fly larvae.