“Can you help tell us what this is?” asks this reader in her submission regarding the thin, black worms pictured below. “And if it is common, or coming from one of us? And any possible ways of stopping worms in the toilet? My mum bleaches frequently and is super clean.” Despite our reader’s short submission, there are a lot of questions to be answered here. Firstly, we can definitely help our reader in identifying the worm-like creature pictured below. We think this is possibly a horsehair worm. These worms are somewhat common, though they are more common in nature than in people’s homes. They would not be coming from our reader or her mother, despite being parasites.
Horsehair worms have a bit of a reputation on the internet, and an unfair one at that. They are parasites, yes, but they only take insects and some crustaceans as hosts. There have been a handful of human cases, but they have been accidental (eg: someone swallowing a horsehair-infested insect, thereby ‘contracting’ the horsehair worm). But in those cases, the humans have not suffered any symptoms of having a horsehair worm inside them other than the feeling of having a worm inside them. Of course, this is unpleasant, but horsehair worms have garnered a reputation for being a nasty parasite that infects humans and ruins lives, which is just not based in any real research of fact. It is possible that other parasites are mistaken for horsehair worms. However, in our reader’s case, it is likely that this is a horsehair worm, given where it was found; horsehair worms only burst forth from their insect hosts once they reach a body of water, as horsehair worms are marine worms.
One of the key things to stop worms from showing up in one’s toilet is to clean it frequently, which our reader has said her mum already does. Likewise, making sure that the toilet is often used, and thereby flushed, is equally important, so as not to let the water inside the toilet grow stagnant, which can attract a lot of creatures if organic growths start to form in the water, like algae and fungi. In this case, it could just be that a horsehair worm-infected insect crawled into the toilet, which let the horsehair worm free. But, since our reader did not report finding a dead bug too, it might be that an insect was recently flushed down the toilet? If that is the case, then here’s a tidbit of advice for all our readers: do not flush insects down the toilet. It is for the very reason that a horsehair worm could just swim back up (or the bug itself, provided it can survive underwater). If our reader or her mum did not recently flush an insect down the toilet, then it could just be that the insect did just accidentally fall into the toilet, which could not have been prevented. Alternatively, there could be a leak in the piping through which the worm entered, which a professional would have to fix. Signs of a leak include: discolored water, foul-smelling or tasting water, and irregularities in water pressure and temperature.
To conclude, we think it’s possible that the worm our reader found was a horsehair worm. It’s still possible that it is something else: the poor resolution of the photo does not let us see the minute details. For that reason, we still recommend avoiding physical contact with the worm. We hope this helps, and we wish our reader, as well as her mum, the very best!
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