Mammals are NOT the only hosts to adult worms. Not certain if they were the same species infecting the intestinal tracts of mammals, but I have personally observed adult tapeworms in local salmon. CanyonMan, fish4brains, and I were enjoying my birthday float down a coastal WA stream. As I was gutting out the catch, f4b pointed into the shallows where I was discarding the offal and asked with a bit of alarm, "Hey... what is that, it looks like a tapeworm?"

I watched carefully as the 1/4 inch wide multi-segmented white ribbon undulated in the water... by golly IT WAS a tapeworm!

"Is it safe?" he asked.

"Sure, no problem," I replied. "It's only inside the gut and doesn't affect the meat."

....

The adult tapeworms that we are able to readily identify by their characteristic ribbon-like shape live entirely in the digestive tract, not the meat.

There they simply bask in the digestive soup soaking up all the goodness the host has to offer.

Each of those tapeworm segments contains thousands of eggs. They are shed by the worm one segment at a time as the eggs mature, and are then excreted by the salmon as infected feces. The eggs hatch and are eaten by zooplankton which are in turn eaten by small fish.... and on up the food chain they go.

YUM…..

When life gives you lemons, you gotta make lemonade. How about milt sacs and fettuccine al fredo?



...

Just kidding....