THESE shocking images reveal the creepy worms that could be living inside your cat. The microscopic pictures show the tapeworms and roundworms in all their gory detail – magnified up to 180 times. 8 Your cat is at risk of harbouring tapeworms Credit: Alamy 8 The demonic-looking worms could be living inside your cat 8 The high-res images have been zoomed in over 100 times 8 Some of the worms are usually found in infected cats Experts say the chances of both kinds taking up residence in your feline friends is significantly increased if they're not wormed regularly.
Tapeworms, which can grow to 16 feet in dogs - roughly the height of a giraffe - hook into the lining of a pet's bowels and develop long ribbon-like bodies - with symptoms including diarrhoea, lack of energy, weight loss, and more. On rare occasions, both tapeworms and roundworms can infect humans too – with the latter known to potentially cause serious damage to children’s eyesight. Roundworms can infect people too - and while usually harmless in adults, can cause serious damage to children’s eyesight.
Hookworms average one to nearly two centimetres long, living in the digestive systems of pets. The images were released by pet worming treatment brands Drontal and Dronspot and captured by award-winning science and nature photographer, Dr David Maitland, using light, confocal, and scanning electron microscopes from his own collection and from St Andrews University. David captured images of the samples on loan .
