The chilling clip shows what seems to be a huge black monster worm squirming along the pavement in Santa Catarina, Brazil.
But it soon becomes apparent that the creature is in fact a writhing mass of hundreds of insects behaving as one.
Stunned Tori Silveira, 23, made the mystifying discovery as she headed to the supermarket.
“I leaned in to get a better look and saw that it was a bunch of little bugs that I had never seen before around here,” she said.
“My first impression very much ‘woah what the f*** is that?’
“I’d describe it as hundreds of long, black worm-like bugs with tiny legs crawling on top of each other, slowly moving down a sidewalk as if they’re migrating to a new area together.
“I’m still not entirely sure what kind of bug they are, some say caterpillar, others say wasp larvae etc. It’s very confusing to me.”
Experts at the London Zoo have since had a look at the footage and explained that the mystery creatures gain more protection by moving as a group when looking for food.
“They may have been changing nest position – which would explain them being on the ground, and may be huddling together as a defensive reaction,” Dave Clarke, invertebrate team leader, explained.
“They’re not aggressive – just trying to protect themselves.”
Dave couldn’t definitively identify what the bugs in the video were, but he thinks they could be sawfly larvae.
Sawflies can be found in every continent around the world apart from Antarctica.
Females can lay up to 90 eggs at a time and the adult insect typically lives for seven to nine days.
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