A cousin to the parasites that cause the disease sometimes affectionately referred to as "beaver fever" in humans, is Giardia muris. Unlike the parasite that plagues people, this species cannot infect humans, but rather only mice and other rodents. It has thus been developed as a laboratory model for studying the parasite of humans. These parasites and their relatives, the diplomonads are also cool in that they have two nuclei.
Image from the CDC Public Health Image Library.
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