Mysterious 'Sausage-Shaped' Creature With Dotted Eyes, Protruding Tail Baffles Internet

A traveler, who found a mysterious "sausage-like" creature at Victoria’s Lake Bolac, Australia, posted a video of it on social media Monday, leaving people baffled.

Guy Shlomi posted a video of the miniature creature on Facebook with the caption “Just another alien in Australia…” Speaking to Yahoo7, Shlomi, from Israel, pulled the creature out from the water and showed it to his friends in disbelief.

“I had never seen something like that so I grabbed him with my hand and showed him to my friends and we started to wonder what it is?” he said.

In the video, a small sausage-like animal with dotted eye and a protruding tail can be seen moving across a white surface before settling down in one spot.

The video went viral on Facebook with several people coming up with suggestions while trying to find out what the creature actually was.

“Men in Black is real, and this thing is an alien,” one user declared while another 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.”

Some people also went on to give outlandish suggestions.

“This is what happens if you leave a tampon in too long,” one woman joked. “Fry it up, it’s like a sausage but with a tail,” another said.

Dr. Tanya Latty, an entomologist at the University of Sydney, said the animal was a rat-tailed maggot and that the creature did not pose a threat to humans. She added that it was a valuable asset.

“They are not harmful and are in fact beneficial insects. They are the larvae of drone flies which are pollinators,” she explained.

These animals are usually found in damp conditions and can grow up to 15 centimeters (0.5 feet) in length.

James Wallman, a professor at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, said, “They are found in pools of stagnant water. The tail is actually a long breathing tube that enables the maggot to breath while immersed.”

In a similar incident in November 2018, a woman uploaded photos of a strange-looking skeletal sea creature with sharp teeth, spike-covered skin and a long head, that she had spotted while walking along Rakaia Huts beach in Canterbury, New Zealand. Though the woman, Hanna Mary, was initially hesitant to touch the creature as she thought it could be poisonous, she gathered courage and picked it up.

The photos went viral on Facebook with several people taking guesses on what the creature could be. Experts, however, identified the creature as a male Dipturus nasutus, also called rough skate, usually found in fish shops in the South Island.