Liver worm? What is this?
Whitetail Deer
What is this worm looking thing? From a healthy doe liver
Its some kind of a parasite...
My unprofessional guess is tapeworms.
I would not eat that liver.
Those are called liver flukes.
If the thought of eating it wasn’t bad enough!!!!
Yep I was mistaken, this is a liver fluke.
I was wondering where my night crawlers went! Gross! Looks like tapeworm?
NOT A FLUKE. At least I have yet to see any photos of "flukes" that look like these.
A type of tapeworm seems the most likely, but I have not read of any that reside IN the liver where these were found. Abdominal worms would be ON the outside....
I'm surprised no one here knows for certain.
Round worms - found in the abdominal cavity on the outside of the organs. If you look when gutting one you’ll likely find a few. Deer have numerous parasites and loads can be quite high where deer densities are high.
Lee
Lee got it. Tape worms are found in the digestive tract.
Don't know if I've ever posted a link before. If it works, here is something to gross you out on a Sunday morning. From qdma
Can round worms be found IN. The liver? These were in the cavities of the liver.....
https://www.qdma.com/10-weird-parasites-live-inside-deer/
Still might be a tapeworm. Deer are intermediate hosts and have cysts on the liver containing the worm. When eaten by predators they then become adults in the intestines of those critters
I knew I hated liver for a reason lol.
I’d never eat a liver anyway.
As a DVM... I've seen lots of tapeworms and that doesn't look like any tapeworm that I have ever seen. "Abdominal worm"
You ate it anyway?!!!!! That’s savage!
I'm not an expert by any means. But that doesn't look like a tapeworm. To my knowledge, tapeworms have segmented bodies. That worm does not appear to be segmented. Send these pics to your local biologist for a more accurate answer.
Looks like an Arterial Worm
Looks like an Arterial Worm
Arterial Worm
Arterial Worm
That’s one of the risks of eating guts!
heart yes, liver heck no. As a rule I don't eat filters.
Amazing what can be found using search engines.
5. Abdominal Worm This strange worm lives freely in the abdominal cavity of deer among (not inside) the organs, so they may be seen by hunters when field-dressing their kill. The adults look like thin, white noodles. Larvae live in deer blood and are sucked up by mosquitos. They develop inside the mosquito and are then injected into other deer that the mosquito feeds upon. Sometimes, dead abdominal worms are found encapsulated on the surface of a deer’s liver, as shown in this photo.
I do NOT think it was an abdominal worm. This was found IN THE LIVER, in the arteries or ducts of the liver. Im leaning towards an arterial worm...
I'm not a diagnostic parasitologist, but one works a few offices down:) Here's what he said.. "Those look like strobilocerci... the only strobilocerci that I'm aware of in the region are those of the larval stage of Taenia taeniaformis which are only supposed to be found in rodents and lagomorphs."
I've looked at more images of them and it seems he's right. They've only been described in rabbits and small rodents. They rely on cats to eat them as they're the definitive host. Maybe you shot a carnivorous deer?
That sounded official, but it was not segmented. And best i can tell only one mouth (kinda like a pac-man).
I see, they looked segmented to me, not like an adult but the one on the left has apparent ridges near the head with the way the light is hitting it. You'd expect one mouth, the larval stage would have a protoscolex.
Weird deal nonetheless, you didn't happen to keep any did you?
