Infection Cycle
Like many other parasite infections, the course of Echinococcus infection is complex. The worm has a life cycle that requires definitive hosts and intermediate hosts. Definitive hosts are normally carnivores such as dogs, while intermediate hosts are usually herbivores such as sheep and cattle. Humans function as accidental hosts, because they are usually a 'dead end' for the parasitic infection cycle.
Read more about this topic: Echinococcosis
Famous quotes containing the words infection and/or cycle:
“What, then, was war? No mere discord of flags
But an infection of the common sky
That sagged ominously upon the earth”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.”
—Robert M. Pirsig (b. 1928)