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Toxic 'Hammerhead Worm' Is Invading Texas, Triggering Warnings
Science Net via Yahoo ^ | 11/10/25 | Tessa Koumoundouros

Posted on 11/11/2025 7:23:26 AM PST by DallasBiff

"Don't kill it, don't squish it, don't cut it up," Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller warned residents via NBC as a toxic flatworm spreads across North Texas.

While this invasive species has been in the US for years, the state's fatally heavy rains, fueled by climate change, are enabling the hammerhead flatworm (Bipalium kewense) to thrive and spread.

This brown and black-striped, flattened land planarian with a distinctive half-moon-shaped head can reach lengths of up to 40 cm (15.7 inches). Like many flatworm species, it can regenerate a whole new worm from slices of itself.

Decapitating the worm will only help it multiply.

(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Local News; Outdoors; Pets/Animals; Science; Weather; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: climatechange; climatechangehoax; fakenews; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax; hammerheadflatworm; texas; worms
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To: al_c

And what happen if I touch one?


61 posted on 11/11/2025 8:46:48 AM PST by citizen (A transgender male competing against women may be male, but he's no man.)
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To: DallasBiff

Liberals


62 posted on 11/11/2025 8:49:25 AM PST by TornadoAlley3 ( I'm Proud To Be An Okie From Muskogee)
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To: DallasBiff

So nuke it from orbit?


63 posted on 11/11/2025 8:50:02 AM PST by suasponte137
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To: econjack

Burn them to ash.


64 posted on 11/11/2025 8:53:44 AM PST by Spacetrucker
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To: DallasBiff

I haven’t seen any here in Dallas yet
But I damn sure will not be putting any in bags in my freezer.


65 posted on 11/11/2025 8:54:32 AM PST by RWGinger
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To: dfwgator

Me too....what a steaming load. SMH


66 posted on 11/11/2025 8:57:48 AM PST by V_TWIN (RIP Charlie Kirk)
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To: tumblindice
These are Viet Cong worms.



"They're like the Viet Cong - Worm Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote."
67 posted on 11/11/2025 8:58:27 AM PST by dfwgator ("I am Charlie Kirk!")
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To: DallasBiff
The worm is a worm, not an insect larva Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Platyhelminthes Order: Tricladida Family: Geoplanidae Genus: Bipalium Species: B. kewense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipalium_kewense
68 posted on 11/11/2025 8:59:23 AM PST by bert ( (KE. NP. +12) QuidQuid Nominatur Fabricatur)
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To: DallasBiff

No, they are not insects. It is a flatworm, a much more primitive creature.


69 posted on 11/11/2025 8:59:24 AM PST by Cronos
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To: PUGACHEV

Because they are more primitive creatures. So they don’t have many specialised parts


70 posted on 11/11/2025 9:00:32 AM PST by Cronos
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To: Delta 21

Or an ounce of salt.


71 posted on 11/11/2025 9:04:04 AM PST by sasquatch (Do NOT forget Ashli Babbit! c/o piytar)
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To: dfwgator

I can no longer sit back and allow hammerhead worm infiltration, worm wriggling, worm terrain subversion and the international Viet Cong hammerhead worm conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Your Commie Viet Cong worm has no regard for human life, not even its own.
Arc Lite them, hook them, drown them. Bomb them back to the Stone Age.


72 posted on 11/11/2025 9:11:31 AM PST by tumblindice (America's founding fathers: all armed conservatives)
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To: citizen

They secrete neurotoxins. Not dangerous, but very irritating. Definitely wouldn’t recommend ingesting any of it.


73 posted on 11/11/2025 9:12:31 AM PST by al_c (Democrats: Party over Common Sense)
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To: citizen

They don’t have many. Amphibians, some birds .... even other hammerhead worms. That’s about it.


74 posted on 11/11/2025 9:14:48 AM PST by al_c (Democrats: Party over Common Sense)
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To: DallasBiff

Nope. As usually used in science today, “worm” generally refers to any long, legless, boneless animal but ONLY if it’s not merely a larval form and ONLY if it hasn’t reverted to that form from some other previous, more complex seeming organism. Historically, these limits didn’t apply; snakes were considered “wyrms,” and many insect larvae are still colloquially called “worms” such as glow-worms, inch-worms, etc.

Generally speaking, “earthworms” and other “segmented worms” are “annelids,” which include leaches and are a sister group to molluscs. “Flatworms” are largely unrelated, and consist of marine and parasitic worms. “Roundworms” are very diverse, and are a sister group to arthropods, which include insects; arachnics like spiders; centipedes; crustaceans like crabs and shrimp, and “velvet worms” which are sort of like shell-less arthropods.


75 posted on 11/11/2025 9:17:25 AM PST by dangus
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To: Cronos

That makes sense. I expect mammals are more complex than worms.


76 posted on 11/11/2025 9:19:32 AM PST by PUGACHEV
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To: al_c

From my chair, it’s better to have them in N Texas than in N Alabama. :)


77 posted on 11/11/2025 9:23:45 AM PST by citizen (A transgender male competing against women may be male, but he's no man.)
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To: PUGACHEV

Because they are more primitive creatures. So they don’t have many specialised parts


78 posted on 11/11/2025 9:23:56 AM PST by Cronos
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To: PUGACHEV

Far more.

Note that “worms” like earthworms or maggots are utterly different from flatworms.

Flatworms are acoelomate (lacking a body cavity) and triploblastic (three germ layers: ectoderm, mesoderm, endoderm), but their body plan is rudimentary. They have a gastrovascular cavity for digestion (no true anus), protonephridia for excretion/osmoregulation, and lack dedicated circulatory or respiratory systems—relying on diffusion for gas exchange and nutrient transport.

Insects, in contrast, are coelomate arthropods with a segmented body, exoskeleton (chitin-based), jointed appendages, and tagmatization (head, thorax, abdomen). They possess an open circulatory system (hemolymph), tracheal tubes for respiration.

Flatworms have a basic centralized nervous system (CNS) with a bilobed “brain” (cephalic ganglion) containing several thousand neurons, two ventral nerve cords, and peripheral nerves for sensory input (e.g., touch, chemoreception via eyespots.

Neuron counts in insects range from ~100,000–200,000 in fruit flies to ~1 million in cockroaches or bees, enabling complex behaviors such as social coordination, navigation, and associative learning. Quantitatively, insects have 50–200 times more neurons than flatworms (which have ~5,000–20,000 neurons total)

Mammals are coelomate, triploblastic vertebrates with a vertebral column, endoskeleton, and highly differentiated organ systems.

Neuron counts are vast: mice have ~70 million, humans ~86 billion. This enables abstract thinking, social behavior, and tool use. Flatworms’ simple CNS pales in comparison, with mammals having 10,000–10,000,000 times more neurons (~5,000–20,000 in flatworms).

The comparison between a flwtworm, insct and human is like a stone carved wheel compared to a bicycle to a F1 race car


79 posted on 11/11/2025 9:43:54 AM PST by Cronos
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To: miniTAX
Oh no, not this extinction canard again. Extinction driven by exotic species happens only on small islands.

I take it you think E.O. Wilson was a fraud. His estimate was that 600 species have been extirpated in the US because of exotics. Even if he were wildly wrong it would refute what he said.

I have a more direct way of explaining this from my own personal experience. Environmentalists are abetting a mass extinction event, sight unseen and particularly among insects.

80 posted on 11/11/2025 9:46:03 AM PST by Carry_Okie (The tree of liberty needs a rope.)
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