A backpacker shared a video of a mysterious animal online that has now gone viral on the Internet.
Watch the mysterious alien-like animal that was potted by a backpacker
[rumble video_id=v4csvb domain_id=u7nb2]
Guy Shlomi shared a video clip of the mysterious animal on Facebook that he spotted in Lake Bolac, in Victoria’s Western District.
He told Yahoo News: “I had never seen something like that so I grabbed [the creature] with my hand and showed him to my friends, and we started to wonder what it is.”
Shlomi shared the video to the Australia Backpackers Facebook group with the caption: ‘Just another alien in Australia.’ The video shows the mysterious animal crawling on a white surface.
The video instantly went viral, leaving people to wonder what this mysterious animal is called. One user wrote: “Men in Black is real, and this thing is an alien.”
Another user said: “That’s so creepy I didn’t even watch it until the end for fear of this being one of those jump-scare videos.”
One user joked: “Fry it up, it’s like a sausage but with a tail” while another said that it looked like a tampon as the user wrote: “This is what happens if you leave a tampon in too long.”
An entomologist at the University of Sydney has now identified the mysterious creature.
Dr. Tanya Latty – an entomologist at the University of Sydney – said that it is a rat-tailed maggot. She told Yahoo News: “They are not harmful and are in fact beneficial insects. They are the larvae of drone flies which are pollinators.”
Rat-tailed maggots can grow up to 15cm in length including their tails and are often found in damp conditions.
“They are found in pools of stagnant water,” the University of Wollongong’s Professor James Wallman told Yahoo News.
[rumble video_id=vbhp8 domain_id=u7nb2]