We received a very short question a while back about worms that smell bad and shed their skin. More precisely, we were asked “what kind of earthworm sheds its tail and sprays a strong smell in defense?” So, the reader is wondering about earthworms specifically (or technically the tail of earthworms) that produce some sort of odor in self-defense. Regardless of our reader’s interests, though, we suspect he is misusing the word “earthworm.” For reasons we will spell out below, he seems to be describing a millipede, or potentially some type of caterpillar, both of which molt (shed) and can smell bad.

A while back, we were sent one of the grimmer questions we’ve ever encountered here at All About Worms. The reader reported that after smoking crack, she saw and felt small white worms all over her body. The worms crawled out from between her toes and protruded from every part of her skin. The reader is a seasoned crack smoker, having used the drug for years, and nothing like this has ever happened before. The reader is scared to go to a doctor because she doesn’t want to reveal her drug use and she also doesn’t want to get sent to a psychiatric institution. She therefore wrote to us, asking us this question: “What do you think is going on and how do you think I can get help?”

A reader wrote to us recently about some worms she is finding in “dark places” around her house. More specifically, she is finding the worms “in lounge, under sofa, behind sofa,” so evidently the worms have taken to hiding around or under furniture. The worms, which are about an inch long, are a cream color with brown tips, although some appear to be mostly brown, which makes them difficult to see because they are the same color as her carpet, and they are always on her carpet. The reader wants two questions answered: what are the cream and brown one-inch worms she is finding, and how can she get rid of them?

A reader asks, “How do you get heart worms in the human heart?” Naturally, we at All About Worms are not medical professionals of any kind and our statements should in no circumstances be taken to constitute medical advice, but we do believe we possess a set of knowledge items germane to this reader’s concern. The reader asks specifically about those types of worms, if any, which may invade the human heart, a concern which is understandable both because of its obvious consequences for human health and due to the fact that popular accounts of heartworm tend to center on its occurrence in dogs and other animal hosts.

The pin worm belongs to the family Oxyuridae, order Oxyuroidea, and the phylum Nematoda. Pin worms are classified as Enterobius vermicularis. Threadworms are also classified as Enterobius vermicularis. Pin worms are also called “seatworms” and they have several spellings, including “pinworm” and “pinworms.”

According to the Cornell Waste Management Institute of the famed Cornell University, worms do not bite. In fact, in nature wax worms do not feed on anything but pollen, honey, cocoons, and beeswax. Wax worm breeders have no problems feeding their inventory of wax worms without the help of pollen and cocoons. These squirmy little creatures can also survive off of an artificial diet of a mixture of dog food, water, and honey or a mixture of Gerber’s mixed cereal, glycerin, honey, and water.

Grub worms feed on plants and the roots of turf grasses and the adult beetles feed on trees, shrubs, and other foliage. While grub worms are harmless to humans, they can be devastating to crops mainly because they feed on crop roots.

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.

Worms prefer complete darkness because the light affects them in the worst way. Light does not kill worms, but if worms spend too much time in the light (typically one hour), they become paralyzed.

A little while ago a reader wrote to us about some white worms with a green spot that “appeared out of nowhere” in his basement. The reader got rid of many of the worms in the basement by taking them outside, but when he got back there were even more worms than there were before. The reader said the creatures in the basement looked like inchworms, but he didn’t seem very confident in this suggestion. He also mentioned that it was raining out when he made his discovery, and thought this might have something to do with the worms’ sudden appearance in the basement. What might the white worms with green spots in our reader’s basement be?

What is a night crawler? This is the basic question we are concerned with, and the answer is straightforward: a night crawler (also written as “nightcrawler”) is simply an earthworm, an extremely common worm we have written about dozens of times. After a brief refresher on exactly what earthworms are, we’ll explain why they are called “night crawlers” (or, again, “nightcrawlers”), and also list some of the other names that earthworms go by. Thus, our treatment of night crawlers and earthworms will be more linguistic than biological.

We received a long, detailed, and disconcerting email from a reader about a week ago. We aren’t sure how to address it, and internal deliberations took place about possible approaches we could take to this reader’s email and question. Actually, the reader didn’t ask a question, but instead listed several extreme medical problems she has experienced over the last six years following an intestinal worm diagnosis. The worm that infected her intestines has been one of only many concerns, as she has experienced several disturbing problems. It’s not clear if all of these problems are truly physical, or if some of them may be emotional, or whether they are related to the intestinal worm infection, and in any case we can’t comment on any of this because we aren’t medical professionals. Nothing we say should be construed as medical advice, and in fact we won’t say much at all. Rather, we will let our reader’s email speak for itself. Perhaps readers have had worm problems, or at least what are experienced as worm problems, that compare to our reader’s issues over the last six years.

Many species of tongue worms have superficial ringlike markings. This gives them the appearance of being segmented.

A reader from Texas recently wrote to us about some small black worms he is finding in his recreational vehicle (“RV”), and sent us a picture of one that is on his floor. On some days, he finds as many as six or seven of the black worms (which can also be “charcoal grey” worms) in his RV, but he has also gone up to a week without finding any worms. After struggling to discern where the worms are coming from, he finally concluded that they are entering the RV through the heat vents. The reader lives in his RV, and so was naturally wondering what he is finding, and he also wanted to know how to get rid of the black worms that have taken up residence in his RV.

Other methods involve using a garden fork to create vibrations and sprinkling the tops of soil with water to trick the worms into believing it is raining. Rain causes earthworms to flee to the surface for fear of “drowning” beneath the top layers of soil.

We received a photo from a reader that appears to depict a few dozen dried worms on some concrete surface, perhaps a driveway, or maybe a sidewalk leading up to a front door. (“Dried worms” sounds almost like some sort of snack, so maybe “dried-up worms” or “dried-out worms” is a better way to describe them.) Normally, we would say the reader asked a question about the dried worms on the driveway or sidewalk or whatever concrete surface we are looking at, but no question was asked. In fact, no text was supplied whatsoever – the picture was submitted and nothing else. We can’t divine exactly what our reader is looking for from us, but context suggests we take his message as an unspoken question of identification. What are the dozens of worms on the concrete, and how did they get there?

We received a very distressing email from a reader recently who is suffering from some sort of parasitic infection, or what is believed to be a parasitic infection. The parasite is complicated. It is decribed as white with a “hard ribbed outer shell,” and it can curl up or lie flat. It is under the skin of the reader, but it can break through, and it causes a lot of itching and discomfort. “Tangles of very small worms” are also somehow related to the parasite’s life cycle, but it is not clear how. (Are the thin, small worms somehow part of the parasite or are they a separate parasite? Or perhaps they are they actually the parasite itself at some stage in its life cycle?) While we are by no means qualified to render a diagnosis (and so we aren’t), our reader’s description brings to mind that of Morgellons disease, a very strange ailment that the medical community regards as a “delusional infestation,” even though the afflicted swear the disease is physical and not mental.

Pin worms or “pinworms” belong to the family Oxyuridae, order Oxyuroidea, and the phylum Nematoda. The pin worm is classified as Enterobius vermicularis. Threadworms are also classified as Enterobius vermicularis.

A reader wrote to us recently about a worm that got into her home. She said that she had been finding these worms on her and her daughter’s skin and in her kitchen. She said that they liked to crawl on their skin and did not seem afraid to be indoors. She was worried because she thought they were coming from her and was interested to know exactly what they are and where they came from. She did mention that her daughter had brought some flowers inside of their home from outside.

The filarial worm larvae transmit the disease through infected mosquitoes. The mosquito bites an infected individual and then it bites an uninfected individual. Once inside the body, the larvae make their way to a particular part of the body and they mature into adult worms.