“I found it in my stool/poop”, writes Shagufta in her submission regarding the long, pink worm pictured below. “The picture attached, in fact, [was taken] before [my] stool. What should I do?” Typically, we cannot respond to these types of submissions with much information regarding the identity of the worms, meaning those submissions which have to do with worms that come from people’s bodies. Given the potential health-related implications of finding an organism in one’s body, we are neither qualified or legally able to identify such an organism. Only a medical professional is. Of course, that is not really what Shagufta is asking: she asks what she should do. But, it is important that we note the second thing Shagufta writes in her submission; the photo was taken before she used the bathroom. This completely contradicts what she writes in the beginning, so we still want to tread with caution here.

“We found this worm in the loo this morning”, writes this reader about the long, red worm pictured below. “We have a kitten, and sometimes flush his stool. I fear this may be yet another bloodworm/earth worm question, but we wanted to ask whether you thought it could’ve come from our kitten. We live in a top floor apartment on the 4th floor in the UK.” Just by looking at the worm, we think it is indeed a bloodworm. If we did not think it was a bloodworm, we would not be able to confirm or deny if we thought it came from the kitten, as only a vet would be qualified and legally able to do so. If our reader thinks that this worm is harming his kitten, or notices that worms are found in its stool, then we recommend taking the kitten to the vet.

“I am finding a ton of these tiny worms in my bathroom”, writes this reader in her submission regarding the tiny, dark brown critter pictured below. “I vacuumed and sprayed some pest spray, but within two days they’re back in full force (close to 100 worms will cluster up within a week). I’ve done this at least four times. I RARELY see them move. It’s like they show up and 90% are immediately dead? At first I thought it was drain fly larvae, but we’ve never seen a single drain fly. After seeing your articles on CARPET beetles, I’m noticing it looks identical, but it’s weird that it’s only by our toilet! We struggled last fall with cigarette beetles, but now I’m wondering if they were carpet beetles. Again, the beetles were only in the bathroom (but in the shower, not by the toilet). Help! Here are photos of the worms!”

“I found this, what I think to be, worm in my toilet”, states this reader in his submission. “Do you know if this is a worm? If so, what kind?” he asks about the long, squiggly, yellow worm pictured below.

“I keep finding these small worms in the toilet”, states this reader concerning the minuscule, clear-white organism pictured below. “Can you confirm what they may be?”

“I just saw this in my toilet bowl. Help?” asks this reader in her submission. She is referring to the seemingly dark brown creature photographed below, who is sticking out into visible part of the toilet bowl.

“I found this strange-looking, dark brown worm in my toilet, just floating there,” states this reader about the organism pictured below. She thinks it was already there before she used the toilet, and she asks if we know what the creature is.

After leaving her house in South-East England empty for three months, this reader has found a worm in her toilet and wonders if we have any ideas about what it could be. The worm is described by our reader as having “yellow and reddish-brown stripes”, and zooming in on the photograph she sent us confirms, at the very least, that the worm is striped.

A black and white-striped worm of considerable length was found by this reader in his toilet in the morning. After finding our website, which “seem(s) to be an authority on worms!” (thank you very much), he hopes we can tell him if the worm is anything to worry about.

One of our readers recently asked us to identify a worm he found in his toilet. He wrote, “it doesn’t look like a tapeworm to me, but that is obviously my fear.”

Our reader found a worm in her bowel movement, so we think it might be a parasite. However, since we aren’t licensed professionals, we can’t provide medical advice of any kind, and therefore encourage her to see a doctor ASAP.

We believe the black worms our reader noticed in the toilet at her work are drain fly larvae and did not come out of her body. Since she did mention having symptoms, even if she thinks they are psychosomatic, we encourage her to see a doctor if she is truly worried about her health or thinks that these might be parasitic specimens.

A reader sent us a picture of a red worm that he found in his toilet. He simply wanted to know what type of worm it was. The worm he found was about 4 centimeters in length and is red in color. It could be a number of types of worms, but from doing our research, it looks to be an earthworm, although they are not generally found inside of homes.

On two recent occasions in the last week, a reader found a worm in her toilet. She found the worm after she used and flushed the toilet in both instances. The worm in the toilet is quite small – it is only about a half an inch long (about 1.5 centimeters) – and it has a white and grey body. (It isn’t really either color, so the worm is more of a whitish, grayish color, with both end tips of the worm being a darker, almost black color.) Understandably, the reader was worried about finding a worm in her toilet, so she went to the doctor to be tested for parasites. She was given Albenza by the doctor as she awaited her test results. In the meantime, she asked us to weigh in the matter, hoping that we can identify the small worm in the toilet she found.

We recently received a question from a reader about a horsehair worm in his toilet. Or at least we think this is what the question is about, as the wording is a little unclear: “I have horse hair worm .i thinking.in my toilet do i flush it?” Obviously, a horsehair worm (or “horse hair worm,” to use the reader’s understandable misspelling) is involved, and it seems to be in the toilet, and the reader’s only question is about whether or not he can flush it. So we’ll focus on the question “can you flush a horsehair worm down the toilet,” but we’ll cover a little more ground so the article has broader applicability.

We recently received a seemingly straightforward question from a reader: “How did a Phoenix Worm end up in my toilet?” This question about Phoenix Worms, although refreshing in its brevity, is actually a little bit tricky to answer, as it gives rise to other questions: what is a Phoenix Worm exactly (hint: it’s not a worm), and could this creature possibly end up in a toilet? If not, then what is our reader finding in his toilet? Then again, if our reader did find a Phoenix Worm in his toilet, we only have one question to answer: how did it end up there?