A fellow dog-lover just reached out to us after finding a worm-like organism near her chihuahua. Her dog was playing outside and she picked him up and relocated him to the car. Not long after she noticed a tiny creature on the seat next to him. She said it reared its head up like a snake. After researching our site and shuffling through the Internet, the closest guess she has is that it is a flatworm. Here is the specimen in question:

This creature is clearly very tiny, since it barely takes up any space on her finger tip. It is olive green or brown with a black pointed head and it seems to either be excreting a white substance, or it has an enlarged white tail. What a strange looking specimen! We see why she thinks it could be a flatworm, but we are hesitant to confirm this. The white end of the creature is quite confusing and we don’t know what it could be. There is a worm called the ribbon worm that secretes a white waste product, but these worms are usually at least 8 inches long.

We don’t know where the reader lives in the world. Although that may seem irrelevant, certain species of worms are more common in different geographical locations. We also don’t know if our reader has any specific plants or crops in her yard that would attract particular creatures. Without that clue or other details, we are stumped! We do know that there are some parasites associated with dogs, a few of which are worms. These include tapeworm, heartworm, hookworm and roundworms. However, none of these even come close to resembling the specimen in the photo that our reader sent. We think that this creature was probably on the fur of her dog (perhaps it accidentally got attached when the chihuahua was rolling on the grass) and then jumped off when they got into the car. We don’t think it is something to be concerned about. That being said, we aren’t medical professionals. If she is worried about her dog and how it might have been affected by this specimen, we encourage her to take the dog to the vet to be examined.

To summarize, a reader sent us some photos of a tiny brown worm she found near her dog. Unfortunately, we were unable to identify the worm. She thinks it might be a flatworm, and while this could be possible, we cannot confirm this identification. If any of our readers have seen a creature like this before or have ideas of what it could be, we invite them to write in the comment section of this post!