The Digestive System of a Hookworm in Dogs (Ancylostoma caninum)
The digestive system of a hookworm is a pretty basic, tubular system. Like many other nematodes, there are only two openings, the mouth and the anus. The mouth has three sets of teeth, used to bite into its prey, and to suck its blood out. The food being digestive moves down one tube, in one direction. It takes the nutrients and minerals it needs to live, and excretes the rest of the material out its anus. One major difference in the hookworm is that it is a pseudocoelom. It lacks the muscles of coelomate animals that allow these animals to move food through their digestive tracts. The hookworm instead uses internal and external pressures, and its body movement, to move the food it takes in, down the digestive tract.