Patrick Sherman Jr., age 13, of Beaumont. Tex., for his question:

HOW DOES THE HAIR SNAKE REPRODUCE?

The hair snake is an animal without a backbone that lives part of its life as a parasite. The adult hair snake lives in fresh water or wet earth. The female cements her eggs together and places them on acquatic plants or on stones under water.

Soon the hair snake's eggs hatch into larvae. Each larva has a special organ that enables it to bore its way into the body of an insect host. The larva then lives as a parasite until it turns into a hair snake.

Sometimes the animal is called a hairworm. Actually, it is not a snake although it looks like one because it has no limbs. Some kinds of hair snakes look like horsehair and live in water troughs. This led to the false belief that horsehairs turn into hair snakes.

The animals are closely related to roundworms, which include some of man's worst parasitic enemies. But hair snakes are harmless to man because they spend their parasitic stages in the bodies of insects.