After this period, the worm will exit the host through an opening in the insect (like its mouth), although this generally occurs only if the insect is near water, where the worm will crawl to once it has fully emerged from the insect. While inside, the worm will grow and develop by absorbing the nutrients that the insect consumes, a process that takes around four to twenty weeks. Once the larvae are ingested, the cysts dissolve inside the host insect.

The eggs will hatch into larvae, which actually live inside cysts in the types of vegetation that grasshoppers, beetles, etc. (By chance, we’ve specifically written about horsehair worms and crickets fairly recently.) In general, horsehair worms operate like this: a female worm will lay eggs (sometimes millions of them) in a water plant. Rather, they are parasites that live in insects like cockroaches, grasshoppers, beetles, and crickets.

Of course, horsehair worms are not in fact former horse hairs. Indeed, long ago people thought that horsehair worms were horse hairs that had somehow become alive. Horsehair worms therefore look like horse hairs.

They can be even longer – up to a little over three feet (the length of one meter) – although this is rare. Horsehair worms are thin, with a body diameter comparable to that of mechanical-pencil lead, and their thinness is exaggerated by their lengthy bodies, which can be up to a foot (about. Horsehair worms are unique creatures with body dimensions that seem almost impossible for a living organism. We are very confident that our reader found a horsehair worm (sometimes known as “Gordian worms”), which is a nematode or roundworm (also spelled “round worm”). We have long awaited a simple question to answer, as we’ve been dealing with some difficult (and strange) questions as of late, and happily this particular reader’s question is within our ability to identify. The worm was found in a puddle in Indiana, where the reader is from (that is, the reader is from Indiana, not the puddle, presumably). We recently received a picture of a worm (posted below) that was discovered by a reader who was wondering what type of worm she found.

Download horse hair worms