The tapeworm’s hooked mouth appendages allow it to attach itself to the host’s intestines.
The tapeworm is a parasitic organism that lives on hosts such as pets, farm animals, and humans. Coming from the Cestoda class, worms are long, segmented worms of different species with a complicated reproductive cycle. A tapeworm infestation usually has minimal symptoms, but a person can develop serious health problems if left untreated.
A tapeworm has a head, called a scolex, with a mouthful of hook-shaped appendages that allow it to attach to the intestinal lining of its host. Just behind the head, the neck develops the segments that form the rest of the elongated worm. A healthy, mature tapeworm can reach 6.1 m (20 ft) in a large host, traveling through the small intestine. The final or tail segments break off and are eliminated with the droppings.
The tapeworm is often caught in small lakes or rivers.
As an adult, the tapeworm absorbs nutrients from its primary host, which may be a dog, cat, cow, sheep, human, or other mammal. To reproduce, the tapeworm can fertilize its own eggs (in some species) and release them to be excreted in the host’s faeces. In the secondary stage, these eggs are ingested by an intermediate host and become embedded in muscles or organs. When the intermediate host, such as a cow, is eaten by another primary host, the eggs begin to develop into new tapeworms.
Sheep can harbor tapeworms.
Tapeworms are often contracted by swimming in a body of water, such as a lake or river, and accidentally swallowing a small amount of water. However, a person can also become infected by eating undercooked meat, such as beef, pork, or fish, or by being bitten by a flea from an infected pet. Humans with tapeworms have subtle symptoms or none at all. This includes weight loss, hunger, indigestion, weakness, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, or anemia. If the tapeworm has spread, using you as an intermediate host and with eggs embedded in vital organs, your liver, lungs, heart and brain may be affected.
Dogs are at risk of getting tapeworms.
Your GP can diagnose a tapeworm infestation by examining a stool sample for segments or eggs of a worm that used it as its main host. However, if the human is acting as a secondary host and cysts form in the organs, the doctor may need to perform a CT scan or ultrasound. Treatment of a tapeworm infestation depends on medication, but the cysts must be surgically removed.