'Sewer monster' caught on camera in Houston

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'Sewer monster' caught on camera in Houston
Posted on Thursday, 22 November, 2018 |




This horrific writhing mass was discovered on the street outside an apartment block after heavy rainfall.
Footage of the disgusting looking specimen went viral earlier this week, prompting social media users to speculate over what type of creature it could possibly be.

As it turns out, the organism is not one, but dozens of intermingled tubifex worms.

"I almost decided to kill it," the man who discovered it was quoted as saying. "It was a squirming, throbbing, amorphous mound of tangled worms, with a constant stream of more worms drifting by."

Tubifex worms, which like common earthworms feed on detritus (dead organic matter), are typically found in the ground near bodies of water such as rivers and lakes.

In this case, it is likely that the rain had washed them out in to the open.

A similar phenomenon went viral back in 2009 after a mass of worms was found inside a sewer.

"In the absence of soil they are coiling around each other," said bryozoologist Timothy Wood. "The contractions you see are the result of a single worm contracting and then stimulating all the others to do the same almost simultaneously, so it looks like a single big muscle contracting."

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https://www.sciencealert.com/internet-freaking-out-over-this-perfectly-normal-pulsating-mass-of-sewer-worms