Abstract
TAPEWORMS are psychologically nasty animals, but they are relieved by attractive life-histories. The elongated worm with its many segments lives in the gut of vertebrates and breaks off its hind divisions (proglottides), passing them out with the faeces of the host. These are full of ripe eggs which are shed on to the ground or into the water. Then comes along some animal which swallows them. Reaching its stomach, they bore through its wall to rest as rounded bladder worms (cysticerci) in its body, where they may swell up forming cysts of fluid, into which may project one or more heads. They, if eaten by their first host, attach themselves by their heads to its gut wall and bud off segments to form elongated tapeworms, which in turn repeat the life-cycle. Occasionally one host serves for both worm and cysticercus; many have both stages in vertebrates, but probably the majority have their cyst stage in some invertebrate, species being enumerated in jelly fish, worms, crustaceans, insects and molluscs.
Faune de France
30: Cestodes. Par Prof. Ch. Joyeux et Dr. J. G. Baer. (Fédération francaise des Sociétés de Sciences naturelles: Office central de faunistique.) Pp. iii + 613. (Paris: Paul Lechevalier et fils, 1936.) 200 francs.
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Faune de France. Nature 139, 611 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139611a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139611a0