The discovery of parasite life cycles

Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

iHeartPodcasts

Astronomy, Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.7 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2026

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Parasites can have amazingly complicated life cycles - moving through a series of host species, and looking quite different while residing within each type of host. Frankly, this stumped scientists for a long time. In today's episode, Daniel and Kelly take a stroll through the history of science to explore how we finally started to figure parasite life cycles out.

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0:00.0	This is an I-Hard podcast.
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1:18.8	Howdy, Extraordinaries? In the past on the show, we've talked about the tortuous paths that parasites take to complete their life cycles.
1:24.4	Trematoed parasites, for example, can go from snails to fish, to birds, and then back again.
	...

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