A man from coastal British Columbia, Canada recently sent in this image of a worm-like creature he found in a bucket of compost juice he was brewing for gardening purposes in late June. The worms appear to be a semi-transparent white in color, with pink down the middle which is enclosed in brighter white rings. The creatures also have incredibly long tails, one of them having a tail that is most likely twice the length of its body.

A woman in Poland is currently dealing with an infestation of hundreds of tiny worms inside her house. According to our reader, the worms are only found sticking to the top parts of her ground-floor walls and ceilings, are 1-2mm long (0.04-0.08-inches), and appear to be black in color with a segmented outer gray layer.

A woman wrote to us about getting infested with horsehair worms while visiting Costa Rica, and wanted advice on how to permanently rid herself of them.

A reader asked us about the worms she noticed on her zinnia plant. We believe the creatures are southern armyworm caterpillars. We have offered a few ways to protect her plants from these voracious eaters.

Today, we answer an inquiry from a gentleman asking if black worms live in the human body. The answer depends on what he is referring to with the words “black worm.”

The images of a nearly transparent worm with spots one of our readers sent presented an interesting challenge. Two of…

One of our readers has asked about “hard shelled worms about 1/2 to 1 inches long that curl into a…

One of our readers, a mother of four with many pets, sent us a series of photographs of specimens found…

Summary: Do the stripes of woolly worms stripes predict the length or severity of winter? It’s a long standing folk…

A reader wrote to us recently about some worms that she found in her shower. As she notes, they look like earthworms, but they are “smaller and thinner.” The reader is uncertain how they ended up in her shower, but she offers some speculation: they might have come from the drain, or she might have brought them in herself, maybe in her hair, as she took a shower after taking a hike. Our reader is wondering what she found, and she is also wondering if she should be worried about the worms that turned up in her shower.

We received a puzzling question recently about some worms that our reader found in the hair of her cat. The worms (or whatever they are) have been caught in the cat’s hair on a couple of different occasions, and the reader is concerned that they might be harmful to her cat in one way or another. They might just be getting caught in the cat’s fur, posing no threat, but they also might be “something worse feeding off him [the cat].” The reader offers a lot of information and a picture, so we’ll try to make some sense of the situation with what we were presented with.

We recently received a question through the All About Worms Facebook page about “two red worms in the toilet bowl.” The worms were “10 cm long, thin, like one millimeter in diameter, and alive, even in the water, they were still moving.” The reader didn’t actually ask for an identification, but instead asked if the worms might be parasites. This is his main concern, and we will focus on this question, although the answer is of course tied to what exactly the reader found, so we’ll touch on the matter of identification as well. What might the red worm in the toilet be, and are they parasitic?

We received an interesting question from a reader through the All About Worms Facebook page about a “greenish grey worm” that his cat found on his lawn. The worm (or probably larva) is “2-3 inches long and had rings around it so he looked like a bunch of inter-tubes stacked on each other.” However, the defining characteristic of the creature is that it made noise. The reader was wondering what kind of worm or larva he (or technically his cat) found.

A reader recently wrote to us about what appears to be a small larva that she found in her soup. (We mentioned a possible “worm” in the soup only because people so often call larvae “worms.”) The reader is wondering what she found, and she also asked if she should be concerned if she accidentally ate one. We’ll tackle each question in turn, suggesting a possible identification and then discussing eating larvae, both in general and as it relates to the reader’s specific circumstances.

A reader asked us through the All About Worms Facebook page about “white worms with yellow bottoms [that are] eating my Dogwood trees.” These white worms with yellow bottoms are very likely white larvae with yellow bottoms, so we’ll adjust our usage accordingly. The reader asked us for an identification, and we’ll largely limit ourselves to this specific matter to keep things short and simple.

Via the All About Worms Facebook page, we received a message from a reader who found about 15 to 20 “worms” in her cat’s food dish. These “worms” are almost certainly insect larvae, so we’ll go ahead and refer to the larvae in the cat food from here on out. In addition to the cat food dish, the larvae were found in the bag of cat food, and in fact this is probably their point of origin, as various types of larvae will infest bags of pet food. The reader also indicated that one of her cats threw up the other night, but it isn’t clear if this is connected to the pet food larvae. No specific questions were asked, but the reader indicated “any info will be tremendously helpful,” so we’ll offer what we can and hope that it helps.

Recently a reader sent us a picture of a smooth, gray worm that he is holding in the palm of his hand. Presumably, the reader found the worm and is wondering what it is, but this is conjecture since we were sent the picture with no accompanying text (apart from “sent from my iPhone.”) We therefore don’t know where, or in what circumstances, this worm was found, and obviously this makes identification more difficult, but the picture is good, so we’ll do what we can with that.

We received a question from a reader who found some sort of larvae in his house. One was found in the hallway, and the other was found on the carpet by the baseboard. The reader says the larvae are white and red on top and green on the bottom, and this can more or less be seen in the photo he submitted along with his question. The reader also reports that the larvae has eight to ten legs. We think our reader found grub worms, which aren’t worms but scarab beetle larvae, so that answers one of his questions. However, he was also curious where the larvae came from, so we’ll address this topic as well.

A reader wrote to us recently about a “scary looking really fast moving worm on my bathroom floor.” Emphasizing its speed once more, the reader reports that the worm, which is actually most likely a centipede (more on this in a second), “moved really fast even on a wet floor,” and also mentioned that it crawled up into the wall after it was spotted. The reader was quite startled by the worm (or centipede), and asked for our help. Obviously, we aren’t in position to help in any sort of direct way, but we can help with the matter of identification, and again we think our reader found a centipede, not a worm, for reasons we will now outline.

A reader recently sent us a great picture of a worm he found in Singapore on his hardwood floor. The worm is relatively long and skinny, and its body color might be roughly described as translucently gray. Overall, it is a fairly nondescript creature – not in the sense that it isn’t interesting looking, but only because it doesn’t have any clear markings or body features. Its plainness is almost an aesthetic onto itself. What is this worm on the floor in Singapore?