![]() ![]() To wrap up, we believe the dozens of white worms our reader found on his patio are horsehair worms. ![]() If our reader wants to get these worms off his patio, he can try washing them off the patio and into the neighboring lawn using a hose, or sweeping them away using a broom! Either way, he should know that horsehair worms are generally considered to be beneficial to the environment and not a pest species! ![]() Therefore, no control measures are needed in order to manage horsehair worms. Large masses of horsehair worms are most often found after heavy rains, as our reader has witnessed.Īlthough horsehair worms are considered parasites when it comes to arthropods, they are not dangerous towards humans, domestic animals, or plants. Horsehair worms need a moist environment to survive, so they wait until their host is in or near a body of water to leave its body. and resemble the ‘hair’ of a horse’s tail or mane, and belong to a phylum called Nematomorpha because of their morphological resemblance to nematode roundworms. These thin, spaghetti-like worms can reach lengths upwards of 3 ft. When the horsehair worm is fully developed, it ejects itself from its host body, killing the host in the process. Horsehair wormsalso known as Gordian wormsare, to say the least, rather mysterious creatures to anyone unfamiliar with them. Young horsehair worms develop inside the bodies of arthropods such as crickets, grasshoppers, cockroaches, beetles, and other insects. While adult horsehair worms are free-living organisms, at immature stages they are parasites. ![]()
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