Most people, noticing a horse hair worm in the water, try to get out of there. Most likely, this is due to the popular rumor that this worm penetrates the skin of a person and brings him incredible torment. Biologists categorically reject this, horse hair does no harm to humans. It reproduces in water, and it simply does not care about anything else. By the way, this worm lives in both fresh and salt bodies of water, but only in clean water.
"Horse hair" refers to the type of invertebrate animals in which the larvae lead a unique parasitic lifestyle. This worm in fossil form has been known since the Eocene. It is also called hairy, Gordian knot or proudia. Today, scientists know at least 350 varieties of hairs. Their length can vary from 50 to 100 cm, very rarely, but two-meter individuals are found. Moreover, in diameter they are no more than 1 mm, some can reach 3 mm. On the presented pictures you can clearly see how horse hair looks. The photo clearly shows his filamentous body, which is dressed in a dense cuticle. To the touch, it is hard and really resembles real horse hair. One horse hair photo shows that one end of the worm ends in a fork. Only this is not a hairy mouth - it just does not have a mouth opening, but the back of the intestine. An adult worm feeds on substances that it has accumulated while still in the body of its host.
By the way, only males have a fork. During copulation, the male covers the body of the female. He also has no special respiratory organs; the Gordian knot breathes with the whole surface of his body.
Horse hair moves in water quite characteristic. Most often, he slowly swims along the bottom, while wriggling in all directions. But it can also swim like a snake, and sometimes it forms bizarre loops, as if curling into a ball, tied around itself. But the most interesting is the vital activity of the larvae of this worm. Horse hair is a heterosexual worm; fertilization of eggs is internal.
The larva is equipped with special hooks that it uses to penetrate the body of its host, which can become a larva of a water insect. Having penetrated inside, the larva of the volvatika stops its development for a while. She has to wait until she and the first owner get into the body of the second. For example, a predatory swimming beetle swallows them.
In it, the horse hair larva lives in a hemocoel, where it absorbs nutrients directly through its skin. The stage of growing up can occur from several weeks to several months. Having turned into an adult worm, a hairy animal breaks through the integument of the body of its owner and gets out, thus horse hair is in the water.
It is most often possible to detect hairy in rivers, lakes, swamps and other bodies of water. It is especially common in waters that have a slow course. There he wriggles on a sandy bottom, somewhere in a shallow place. Sometimes it can be seen right near the shore. If you notice a tangle of long and thin worms of brown or black color, very similar to horse hair that has fallen into water, then do not be alarmed, it is completely safe for humans and will not cause any harm.
