Hespeler Animal Hospital

Some interesting facts about tapeworms and your pet

Most parasites in dogs and cats cannot be seen with the naked eye.  The adult worms live in the intestine and they sure don’t want to leave, they’ll die if they do!  So, you’re unlikely to see worms in your pet’s poo, unless they’ve fallen out the back end, like from an overcrowded bus.  Worms lay eggs, sometimes thousands per day, and those do come out in the feces, but the eggs are microscopic. You will not be able to see them and you will not know your pet has parasites.  Unless you bring a stool specimen in to your vet for a test called a “fecal”.

 http://www.hespeleranimalhospital.com/2011/09/25/what-is-a-fecal-and-why-is-it-so-important/

 There is one exception to this, however, and it’s the tapeworm.  The adults are very long and they also live in the intestine and don’t want to come out into the poop. So you won’t see the adults of these worms either.  You CAN see immature tapeworms, however, also known as “segments”. That’s because rather than laying eggs, they pass small pieces of their body into the environment.  These contain eggs, so when they dissolve, the eggs are released.

 I think tapeworms are amazing, even if they are gross.  The top segments in the body contain both ovaries and testes.  Each segment is a reproductive machine!  As the segments mature and move down the worm’s body, the gonads dissolve and a uterus develops.  The fertilized eggs are inside this uterus.  Then, as the segment gets closer to the worm’s “tail”, the uterus disappears and all that remains are the egg packets.

 The tapeworm passes these eggs into the host’s feces by shedding pieces of it’s body.  These segments look almost like flat inchworms when they’re fresh, and like rice or cucumber seeds when they’re dry.  That’s what you can sometimes see on the dog’s or cat’s feces, or on the fur near the rectum.  You can’t see the eggs themselves; like those of other worms, the eggs are microscopic.  

 The other fascinating thing about tapeworms is that they require an intermediate host to reproduce.  So, for example Taenia taeniaeformis, a common tapeworm in cats, needs to develop inside a mouse before it can infect a cat.

And Dipylidium caninum uses the dog and cat flea as its incubator, before it infects its final host (your pet).  So, a dog or cat cannot become infected if it eats tapeworm eggs.  It needs to eat the intermediate host.

So, when I see someone’s pet with tapeworms, I know it either hunts, or it has recently been infested with fleas.

 Fortunately, tapeworms are easy to treat.  You can get some prescription de-worming medication from your veterinarian that is safe and very effective.