Are dog worms transferrable to humans?
First, ‘ringworm’ is a fungus, not a worm. Second, this is a very common question and hard to answer. The ONLY intestinal worm that actually lives in humans is the pinworm, and it is only transferable from human to human. Dogs/cats do not carry pinworms. Roundworms, hookworms, and tapeworms, do not live in the human intestine like they do in dogs/cats. However, (and here’s where it gets complicated) roundworm and hookworm larvae, in their infective stage, can cause problems. For example, a child plays in the dirt where a dog, raccoon, or wild canid has defecated. The child then puts its hands in its mouth or eats without washing, and swallows the larvae. The larvae don’t travel to the intestine like they would in a dog, but instead get ‘lost’ and cause visceral larval migrans as they travel through the internal organs, or ocular larval migrans if they reach the eye, which can cause blindness. Hookworm larvae can penetrate skin, for example someone walking barefoot, and the larvae cause
