![]() ![]() Scientists are slowly unraveling the details of the hairworm’s and cricket’s relationship. Pet owners sometimes find a hairworm swimming in their cat or dog's water dish. ![]() A young hairworm finds its way into a cricket or similar insect like a beetle or grasshopper, and once it has grown into an adult, it takes over its host’s brain to hitch a ride to the water. How a hairworm ends up in a puddle, or another water source such as a stream, hot tub or a pet’s water dish, is a complex story. The darker-colored hairworm, a male, curls around the lighter-colored females in an attempt to mate. But if you had happened on the puddle a few hours earlier, you might have witnessed a gruesome spectacle - the hairworm wriggling out of a cricket’s body, pushing its way out like the baby monster in the movie “Alien.” Three hairworms emerge from a cricket in the lab of biologist Ben Hanelt, at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Good news: It isn’t interested in infecting or attacking humans. It’s a hairworm - also known as a horsehair worm or Gordian worm. If you’re looking down at the puddles this winter or spring, you might spot a long, brown spaghetti-shaped creature whipping around madly in a figure 8. The rains in California bring out more than mushrooms and newts. ![]()
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