Hookworms have the added advantage that microscopic hookworm babies can hang out in the soil and burrow into the skin, human as well as feline and canine. Whipworms are masters at laying low in soil whipworm eggs can survive 4 to 5 years in the ground. They have the added distinction of infecting only dogs and not cats. Whips can cause severe diarrhea and can be very difficult to detect by routine fecal analysis. They are often more expensive to treat.
Tapeworms are flat and look like grains of rice.
All require an intermediate host to become infective. That s a fancy way to say the tapeworm eggs have to pass through a flea or a rodent to complete life changes in order to be able to infect a dog or cat. For those pets that don t hunt, controlling fleas will control tapeworms, because it s the flea that carries the tapeworm eggs that infect the pet. I heard that kills worms. While pet stores and feed stores do carry some deworming agents, those medicines are very limited in the types of parasites they kill.