Question

How does a person become a definitive host, intermediate host or both?

Answer 1

host :- is an organism which provide suitable life condition for the parasite .

Parasite :- is an organism which use host body machinary to survive and multiply.

there are two types of multiplication pattern of parasite. 1. asexual 2. sexual

some times the parsite multiply asexually only in one host and needed another host to complete sexual cycle

on the basis of this the host is devided as intermediate host and definitive host .

1. The intermediate host is a living organism in which a parasite spends short time period of its life cycle before exploiting a suitable host to become mature and reproduce sexually. Inside the intermediate host, parasite passes one or more asexual stages, mostly development stages. The intermediate host is also known as the secondary host.
2. Definitive host or the final host is an organism in which a parasite becomes sexually matured. The definitive host is also known as the primary host. Inside the definitive host, the parasite becomes an adult and reproduces sexually.

• example of intermediate host:- for Trypanosoma (a parasite which causes sleeping sickness) intermediate host is the human.
• example of Definitive host :- Trypanosoma which causes sleeping sickness uses tsetse fly as its definitive host and shows sexual reproduction inside tsetse

from the above information we can conclude that when in a person the parasite reproduces asexually then it is intermediate, but when that parasite multiply sexually then it is definative.

A big examples of definitive hosts are humans, which can harbor viruses, bacteria, and worm-like parasites like the pinworm, whip-worm, and some tapeworms.