Story By: Angjela Trajkovska, Sub Editor: Michael Leidig, Agency: Newsflash
This is the moment a bizarre wiry creature wriggles around on the lakebed after accidentally being hooked while fishing.
The incident was filmed at Zavoj Lake on the Visocica River in south-eastern Serbia, and the footage was later shared on Facebook by Marko Ungurjanovic where it has been widely shared by netizens.
In the video, a dark-coloured, wiry creature that looks like a shoelace is seen wriggling around on the bottom of the lake.
Marko confirmed to Newsflash local media reports that the wiry little creature was accidentally hooked while fishing at the lake.
While he did not know what the organism was, he later discovered that it was a Nematomorpha, commonly known as horsehair worms or Gordian worms.
Most species range in size from 5 to 10 centimetres, sometimes reaching lengths of up to two metres in extreme cases. They are between 1 and 3 millimetres in diameter.
Credit: Newsflash/@ungurjanovic 
Credit: Newsflash/@ungurjanovic
Horsehair worms are found in damp areas, such as watering troughs, swimming pools, streams, puddles, and cisterns. The adult worms are free-living, but the larvae live as parasites on creatures such as beetles, cockroaches, mantids, and crustaceans.
They have an external cuticle without cilia. Internally, they have only a longitudinal muscle and non-functional gut, with no excretory, respiratory or circulatory systems.
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