Recent rains in Texas have brought forth one of our many worm-like friends, the cankerworm caterpillar, and they are invading The Lone Star State by the masses. Cankerworm caterpillars are a species of inchworm, and are the larval form of the hackberry leafroller moth. There is a lot to unpack here. First of all, ‘inchworm’ is a name thrown around a lot in reference to worm-like creatures, and the thing is that the term ‘inchworm’ is almost as broad as its application. The term refers to a whole bunch of moth species that are endemic to the North Americas, and it specifically refers to those moth caterpillars that have legs at the front and rear of their bodies, but not in the middle, forcing them to arch their back as they ‘inch’ across a surface. Secondly, a “leafroller caterpillar” is also an umbrella term, and refers to multiple species of caterpillars which roll the leaves they munch on and hide in them when they need shelter. Lastly, and most importantly, is this newsworthy invasion of caterpillars.

A reader sent us a question the other day about a worm, or what “seems to be a worm,” that was found on her mother’s head. The reader went through quite a bit of trouble to figure out what she found, researching online and consulting her notes from a zoology class, but she couldn’t figure out what was on her mom’s head. She therefore wrote to us, hoping that we might be able to help with the matter of identification.

We received a brief and somewhat perplexing question from a reader a few days ago about brown inchworms in the kitchen. In fact, her entire email consisted of the question “what are brown inchworms in the kitchen?” – and nothing else was written. We therefore aren’t sure what our reader’s situation is, and we also aren’t really sure what information she is looking for. Brown inchworms in the kitchen are, well, brown inchworms in the kitchen, and we don’t really know what else to say about the matter. What we can do, however, is provide a little information about inchworms, so we’ll focus on this general theme below.

The other day we received a message from a reader who wants to know how to get rid of inchworms and silkworms, or how to get rid of “inch worms” and “silk worms,” as she has it. To call what we received a “message” is a bit misleading, however, since all we were sent was a mere sentence fragment composed almost entirely of capital letters. (Inexplicably, one instance of the word “worm” was written normally, but the rest was all caps.) We’ll try our best to answer our reader’s question, such as it is.

We recently received a question through the All About Worms Facebook page about what we think might be inchworms (occasionally spelled as “inch worms”). The inchworm, if it even is an inchworm, is brown and quite small, and to get a better view of it, the reader put it under a microscope and sent us the magnified image. Below we explain what an inchworm is, and we also explain why we think our reader might have found one.

Over the last few days, we have received two questions about tiny worms that hang on threads. In a separate article, we addressed one of the thread-spinning worms, which were found outside, and now we will address the question from a reader who found the tiny worms hanging on threads in his kitchen. The reader had several questions, but they primarily concerned what the tiny worms are and how to get rid of them, and thus we will direct our primary attention toward the following question: what kind of small worms can you find hanging from silk thread in your kitchen, and how do you get rid of them?

We received a video through the All About Worms Facebook page the other day of what appears to be a tiny worm on a roll of toilet paper. (The tiny worm is likely a tiny larvae, but more on that below.) The reader was quite alarmed by what he found, and mentioned (presumably, and hopefully, in jest) that he is “tempted to burn his house down” immediately because of what he found. For practical, legal, and moral reasons, we don’t recommend this course of action, and in fact we don’t think he should be concerned at all. He appears to have found a very small inchworm, the larval form of a geometer moth, for reasons we outline below.

A reader wrote to us the other day about “little worms all over [her] laundry room,” which is near a closet that holds the trash. The small, brown worms are “all over the walls, the floor, the trash/closet, washer/dryer, even hanging from the ceiling from single thread webs.” However, they are only in this one area of the house, so apparently the worms originated in this area and haven’t spread. The reader is wondering what the brown worms are, why they are in her house, and how to get rid of them.

A reader wrote to us a while back about an interesting red worm that he found. He took a picture of the creature (see below), which shows a relatively small red worm in what appears to be an arid environment. The picture captures the red worm mid-movement, showing the middle of the worm’s body raised in an arc, which led the reader to suspect that he found an inchworm (commonly spelled as two separate words – “inch worm” – and also called a “measuring worm”). We have no reason to doubt this hypothesis, so below we provide some basic information about inch worms, although for reasons that we explain we aren’t sure exactly what the red inchworm our reader found is.