However, the usual length of time that a horsehair worm will develop inside the host is 4-20 weeks. The horsehair worm is so thin that it can develop and grow to its maximum length inside the body cavity of small cricket. The parasite makes its way into the body cavity of the insect where it absorbs nutrients from the insects’ food through the body wall. Once ingested, the cysts dissolve inside of the grasshopper or cricket gut. Once the eggs hatch into larvae, they live inside cysts in vegetation - vegetation that is ingested by crickets, grasshoppers and other insects or bugs. She typically lays her eggs in water plants. The female can lay as many as 10 million eggs. The life cycle begins when a male and female horsehair worm mate in soil or freshwater. They can also be found swimming around in lakes, rivers, streams, and garden ponds. They have been spotted emerging from a cricket on the kitchen floor of homes or in the toilet after a cricket has been dumped there, and they have even been spotted in pet’s water bowls. Finding horsehair worms in odd places is not uncommon. They usually peak during the late summer as well as during the fall months. Horsehair worms are typically dark brown in color, but some are tan, yellow or black. The horsehair worm looks like the thin hair of a horsetail. This unique worm earned the name based on the way it looks.

The horsehair worm belongs to the roundworm family. If you have observed the horsehair worm emerging from the body of a larger animal or anything other than an insect, it was probably inside of the cricket, cockroach or beetle that was just ingested by the larger animal. These odd threadlike or hair-like creatures can grow up to 3.2 feet (one meter) and only 0.03 inches (3 millimeters) in diameter.

Also called Cabbagehair, Gordiacea, Gordiid, and Gordian Worm, the horsehair worm is a parasite that lives inside crickets, cockroaches, grasshoppers, beetles, and other anthropod pests. What’s so unusual about them (well at least one unusual thing about them) is where they prefer to live. Nematomorpha (Hairworm), better known as the “horsehair worm,” is one of the most unusual parasitic worms on earth today.

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