Alien-Like Worm Bursts Out Of Dead Praying Mantis In Creepy Video

Nature is full of awe, wonder, and a whole lot of beauty. But as anyone who’s ever learned of the circle of life knows, nature isn’t all beauty and sunshine. One video goes to prove just that. It captured the near horror-film moment that an alien-like worm busted out of a dead praying mantis.

In the video, you can see a dead praying mantis laying on the ground. It’s all fine and dandy until the person filming pokes the dead body – and it springs to life! Long, tentacle-like worms push their way out of the dead insect’s body. The eerie footage was shared to Reddit where it quickly went viral. In less than a week, the video had accumulated nearly 2,000 comments.

The video was shared with the caption, “Better call the Men In Black,” and many of the commenters agreed. As expected, people weren’t thrilled to learn that the video wasn’t photoshopped or a scene from a movie, but was actually real life.

“It is 2020 after all,” one person commented.

“Thank you very much but Id like to return these nightmares please,” another person wrote.

“Why is the world this terrifying,” another said.

Of course, several people were also commenting wondering what these things actually are!

As the more logical might expect, the video didn’t capture an alien-invasion or extraterrestrial tentacles. Instead, the thing popping out of the dead praying mantis is a horsehair worm. They’re a relatively common insect parasite, though they typically stay inside their host’s body. The video happened to capture that moment the worms were breaking out in search of a new, and living, host.

Someone on Twitter commented, “People keep tweeting ‘It’s a horse hair worm’ as if knowing the name for it makes it any less a thing of our nightmares?” We couldn’t agree more.

Watch the moment in the eerie video below:

We’re all doomed. 😳💀 pic.twitter.com/ZIUnPNfHq9

— Fred Schultz (@fred035schultz) November 23, 2020