The diet of our ancestors: what tapeworms tell us about human evolution

The worms attach to the wall of a person’s small intestine via those hooks you can see on the right. Once there, they absorb nutrients potentially growing to be many meters long. All the while, they are producing eggs. These are carried out into the environment in the person’s stool and get ingested by another animal, called the intermediate host. In the case of T. solium the intermediate host is a pig. Once inside a pig, the eggs hatch, break out from the intestine and find their way into various organs and tissues. In these locations, they develop into small cyst-like structures and basically wait. If a human then eats the pig, especially without cooking it properly, they get into that person’s gut. <a href="https://medium.com/illumination/the-diet-of-our-ancestors-what-tapeworms-tell-us-about-human-evolution-27bc23ca4f8b">Website</a>