• Question: What do gut parasites look like?

    Asked by save520prex to Erin Pallott on 4 Apr 2025.
    • Photo: Erin Pallott

      Erin Pallott answered on 4 Apr 2025:

      Parasites come in all shapes and sizes! There are single-celled parasites which you can’t see in the gut without a microscope. Parasitic roundworms are animals and look a bit like earthworms, but smoother and often paler/white. These can be tiny (1-2mm) all the way up to 30cm depending on the species. Tapeworms look like pieces of tape like the name suggests. Very long and flattened shape with a body that comes apart in segments.
      So they can look pretty different!

Comments

  • Photo: melissau

    melissau commented on :

    As Erin has said, there are many different parasites which affect the gut of many different species of animals, including humans. They range from very small (needing a microscope to see them) to very large. A small parasite which affects dogs is Giardia (which also affects people) which is pear shaped and less than a millimetre long, you’d need to put a sample of poo under the microscope to see it . A dog infected with giardia is likely to have diarrhoea, may have pain in their abdomen (although of course the dog can’t tell us this directly, unlike a human), At the other end of the scale, there are some very large tapeworms, which are made up of segments – although I have to admit that I’ve never seen one myself, it’s reported that sperm whales can have a type of tapeworm which is up to 40 metres long, which sounds pretty gross, doesn’t it? I’ve never worked with sea mammals so I’m not sure how a sperm whale tapeworm infection would be diagnosed or whether it would be something that’s found during a post mortem (for example, when an animal is washed up on the beach and the scientists are trying to work out why the animal has died)