As Colorado Parks and Wildlife researchers continue to study the newly confirmed presence of wolves in Colorado and their potential impact, they’ve made an unsettling find.
According to CPW biologists and veterinarians, several of the fecal samples from the pack of wolves confirmed in Moffat County contain eggs for a tapeworm called the echinococcus canadensis.
This parasite is known to lead to something called hydatid disease in ungulates – hoofed mammal species – with moose and elk most susceptible.
The tapeworms that cause the disease are passed to an ungulate when the animal eats feces of a candid species that has been hosting the parasite’s eggs in their intestines.
Now in a new host, the eggs hatch and move to the lungs and liver where they’ll start to form cysts filled with larvae.
When these ungulates are eventually eaten by a candid species, such as a wolf, coyote, or dog, the larvae in the cyst are able to get back into the digestive track of the candid and continue its life-cycle.
Parasites found in feces of Colorado wolves capable of spreading to humans, ungulates
