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A worm is any of numerous relatively small elongated soft-bodied invertebrate animals. The most famous is the earthworm, a member of phylum Annelida, but there are hundreds of thousands of different species that live in a wide variety of habitats other than soil.
Originally, the word referred to any creeping or a crawling animal of any kind or size, such as a serpent, caterpillar, snail, or the like. Later this definition was narrowed to the modern definition which still includes several different animal groups. Major phyla include:
Some other invertebrate groups may be considered worms. Many insect larvaA larva ( Latin; plural larvae is a juvenile form of animal with indirect development, undergoing metamorphosis (for example, insects or amphibians). The larva can look completely different from the adult form, for example, a caterpillar differs from a bue are called worms, such as the railroad wormseveral The railroad worm is a larva or larviform adult of beetles of the genus Phrixothrix in family Phengodidae, characterized by their unique possession of two different colors of bioluminescence. Their body can glow green, while their head can glow re, glowwormGlowworm is a term referring to a bioluminescent invertebrate of any of several families. Larvae and larviform females of the beetle family Phengodidae are referred to as either glowworms or railroad worms. Larvae of the the firefly beetle family Lampyrid, or bloodworms. Worms may also be called helminths, especially in medical terminology.
When an animal, such as a dogThis article discusses the domestic dog. For other members of the dog family, see Canidae. The dog is a canine omnivorous mammal that has been domesticated for somewhere between 14,000 and 150,000 years. In those millennia, the dog has developed into hund, is said to have worms, it means that the dog is infested with parasitic worms such as tapeworm (or the fungal ringwormRingworms can also refer to fans of the Japanese Ring series of horror novels and films, as well as the US remake. Ringworm also known as Tinea is a contagious skin fungus that manifests initially as a flat hairless patch on the skin which later expands t).