Some are black, some are rusty red, and the big ones may be two feet long. In North America, we can find 15 different hairworms. He is a very simple animal ca11ed a roundworm or a threadworm. Pinky has banded rings called segments around his body, and the hairworm has no segments. Some people call him a hairworm, but he is not related to the pink Earthworm. The hair snake is not a true snake, for he does not have one bone in his body. They will stay inside the insects until they are ready to live in the water.Īll true snakes have bony skeletons with dozens of ribs. Hair snake lays strings of eggs in the water, and they hatch into millions of grubs. This is why we never see young hair snakes in the horse trough. When he is fully grown, he leaves the insect and drops into the water. Both tips of the body are blunt and rounded. The bodies are cylindrical in cross-section (not flattened). They are not segmented like earthworms or leeches. They are practically featureless, smooth, long, thin aquatic worms that writhe into knots and curls. Most of the stringy fellow's life is spent inside the tummy of a cricket or a water beetle or a grasshopper. Adult horsehair worms can be up to nearly 2 feet long and live in water. And the true life story of the hair snake is more amazing than the fanciful story. His parents came from his grandparents, who were just like all the hair snakes who have ever lived. The hair snake came from his parents, who were also hair snakes. Never never never will the hair turn into a living snake. You can test The story with a horsehair in a bottle of sunlit water. With the help of the sun and the water, the hair turns into a living hair snake. It says that the Hair snake begins life when a horsehair falls into the drinking trough. The story has been handed on, and most of us have heard it. Long ago someone invented an amazing story to explain the horsehair snake. And when people cannot so1ve a mystery, they tend to make up a fancy answer to explain it. Naturally this makes us curious about where the stringy creatures cams from. Yesterday, perhaps, there were no hair snakes in the horse trough. Both names suit him, because the skinny fellow looks for all the world like a hair, perhaps two feet long a coarse hair that might have come from the tail or mane of a horse. Then we do notice him we call him the hair snake or the horsehair snake. But sometimes he gets into the trough of water where the horses drink. This long, stringy animal lives in creeks and ponds where we hardly notice him in the muddy water. Many young peop1e have put a hair from a horse's tail into a jar of water, hoping it wilt turn into a snake. Perhaps you have tested the story to see if it is true. Then chances are you have heard the strange story of the horsehair snake. Maybe you live in the country where there are horses and other friendly farm animals. We have found horse hair worms in bush covered and farmland, stony and gravelly streams. Tom Schaffer, age 9, of Boise, Ida., for his question: Do horsehairs really turn into snakes?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |