Ewww!

Not much grosses me out, hence my life long desire and ultimate achievement  of becoming a veterinarian. However, when learning about a few things, I have to say, I was a bit freaked out. Most of these things were learned in veterinary parasitology class.


Here's one that reminded me of some crazy sci fi movie where aliens invade your liver. Funny enough this was even one of the agents used to attack people in a book called "The Eleventh Plague" by John S. Marr, MD and John Baldwin.


Good book by the way but I AM partial to medical thrillers.


Remember our discussion about tapeworms Monday? As I said, most of them are harmless to humans too. This one is an insidious little bugger. It's the Echinococcus sp. of tapes.


This link is a great quick resource on what it is and what it does, etc from the US National Library of Medicine.  


Basically, once they are ingested, they often find their way to your liver, where they form cysts that may not even show up for years to decades and oh, if they rupture can kill you!  


For a visual of these cysts - in a rabbit:

Here's another great website - one that has some photos and a life cycle as well.