Viral PressAnother head-scratcher here for you folks. You’re welcome.
A strange creature has been spotted in Taiwan. It looks to me like a mess of wire coat hangers, which have become sentient and started crawling about. I’ve always been sceptical of wire coat hangers and now my suspicions have been confirmed.
The writhing creepy crawly was spotted in Hsinchu, Taiwan by Huang Meilan, who captured the being on camera.
Check it out:
The strange creature was compared to ‘an alien life form that has got lost on Earth’ after it was seen creeping around rocks.
The footage was captured and shared to social media by a ‘shocked’ Meilan, who said:
I found this on the ground and it caught my eye. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It was so strange and people said different things about it. But I wanted to know what it actually was.
So what is this weird creature? A relative of Slenderman? A being that’s crash-landed on earth after a meteor shower?
Well, if you want to remain full of hope and speculation, I’d say stop reading now and just let your mind wander.
If you’re after the truth though, it’s a tangled mass of horsehair worms. Soz. Though they look creepier than an alien life form.
Horsehair worms are pretty harmless, and are found in wet areas such as streams, puddles, water troughs and cisterns. They basically writhe about and tangle themselves in knots. Sounds alright to me.
According to the Entomology department at the University of Kentuck, horsehair worms develop as parasites in the bodies of grasshoppers, crickets, cockroaches and some beetles.
When they are mature, they leave their host to lay eggs. Fortunately for everyone who’s super weirded out by this, they are not parasites of humans or livestock, and pose no public health threat.
Wikimedia CommonsThey write:
Tangled masses of these worms can be found in the spring. This has led to a variety of stories about their origin. The name ‘horsehair worm’ refers to the old belief that they came from horse hairs that fell into water and came to life.
Cabbagehair worm is used in some localities because they can be found in the water droplets that collect in cabbage leaves. Since they are usually contorted into “knots”, the name Gordian worm was used by some. According to Greek legend, King Gordius of Phrygia tied a complicated knot.
Although biologists have partially untied the mystery of these knotty worms, certain aspects of their biology are still coiled up tightly.
Alien or not, the whole spectacle of a load of massive worms tangled up and writhing about it pretty stomach-churning enough. Just off for some spaghetti. Yummers.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.