A documentary wildlife photographer had a startling encounter with a brown bear cub that appeared to have long white ropes attached to its rear end.
But upon taking a closer look and reading the caption, viewers were horrified to find out that the long, white strings were a bunch of tapeworms wriggling out of the carnivorous mammal’s body.
The host bear can accumulate the parasite, the broad fish tapeworm, from eating salmon.
A tapeworm inside a bear can reach up to nine meters or 30 feet. The video garnered over 20 million views within a few hours after posting.
The unsettling video triggered a sense of shock and horror amongst viewers as they witnessed firsthand the reality of the life cycle of parasites and the actual condition of animals surviving in the wild.
Another surprising fact is that humans can also become hosts for these parasites, wherein a 67-year-old Thai man excreted an 18-meter-long beef tapeworm, known scientifically as Taenia saginata, after getting dewormed in 2021.
