LIVER FLUKE

Drawing illustrating the evolutive cycle of the liver fluke.
The cow, grazing the herbs from the border of water points, ingest the metacercariae (dormant kystic form of the parasite). The metacercariae fix at the level of the liver and acquire their adult shape, called fluke. The fluke produces eggs that will hatch only when these will be expelled in the external environment with the faeces. The eggs hatching releases a mobile larva, the miracidium. In its turn this larva infects a gasteropod mollusk, the lymneae, within which it changes into a cercaria (with the aspect of a tadpole). The cercaria released again into the external environment will fix on aquatic plants and take its dormant form, the metacercaria.