How Do Tapeworms Get Their Food?
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Tapeworms are Parasites
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Tapeworms get their food from a primary host. This is the person or animal in whose intestine the worm lives. The worm hooks its rostellum into the wall of the host's small intestine. When nutrients that the host is in the process of digesting flow past the body of the worm, they get absorbed into the worm through its skin. The host is deprived of those nutrients and the tapeworm gets larger.
Tapeworm Biology
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Tapeworms are cestoda flatworms. Adult tapeworms cannot survive outside of a host, which is always a vertebrate. The head of the tapeworm ends in the rostellum, the hook, by which the worm attaches to the host. Tapeworms have rows of teeth with which they reinforce their hold. As the tapeworm grows, it develops new segments. Within each segment, there is a digestive system and a reproductive system. After the digestive system in the segment that is farthest from the head deteriorates, the segment, full of tapeworm eggs, drops off. The host eliminates the eggs and may re-ingest them if they get on their hands, or in the case of an animal, on their tongues. The tapeworms that can infest humans are known to grow as long as 30 feet.
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Types of Tapeworms
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There are several kinds of tapeworms. Dipylidium caninum tapeworms infect dogs and cats and are transmitted in the larvae of fleas. Humans can become infected by taenia solium, tapeworms that infect pigs; taenia saganata, tapeworms that infect cows, and diphyllobothrium latum, tapeworms that infect fish. Humans get these tapeworms from eating raw or poorly cooked meat.
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