We recently heard from a reader who just moved to Bloomington, Indiana from Texas. She discovered some weird worms in her bed. She said they are small and curl up into a tiny circular shape. Some of them are black and some of them seem translucent. Finally, she explained that she just changed the sheets the day that she noticed the worms, so there is the possibility that they came from the closet where the sheets were, and didn’t come from the bed. Here is the photograph she sent us:

The specimen is far enough away and small enough that we can’t determine very much about how it looks from the photograph. Therefore, we will just have to go off of the clues our reader provided for us. According to her, the worms are black or translucent and curl up into a circular shape.

When readers write to us about finding worms in their sheets, we often learn that the specimens they have discovered are carpet beetle larvae. However, these larvae are small, circular, and reddish brown. In other words, the organisms our reader found don’t look like carpet beetle larvae, and are likely not carpet beetle larvae. So, what are they?

Our first thought is that these organisms are drain fly larvae, which are tiny black and translucent worms that feed on the organic matter that builds up in a drain. While the appearance matches what our reader discovered, we aren’t sure why the larvae would be in our reader’s sheets. Perhaps they were feeding on something in the closet near the sheets, but we don’t know for sure.

Another thought is that the specimens could be millipedes. We think the creatures our reader found are too worm-like (don’t have legs) and are too small to be millipedes, but millipedes do curl into a C-shape like the organisms our reader found. While we don’t think this is a great match, we figured we would throw it out there since we didn’t get a good look at the specimen in question!

Of course, the other possibility is that the creatures our reader discovered aren’t drain fly larvae or millipedes. We aren’t convinced she found either of these creatures, and there is a long list of other worm-like organisms or larvae they might be. Unfortunately, we can’t see the specimen well enough to speculate on what else she might have found. We recommend she wash her sheets and investigate and clean out the linen closet if necessary.

To wrap up, one of our readers discovered some tiny worms in her bed. We think she might have found drain fly larvae, but we also acknowledge the creatures could be another type of larvae or worm!

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