When I used to work with pigeons, I found it very hard to extract the cestoda from the small intestine without the loss of the scolex. I struggle a lot because it is a main feature that play a major role in identification and classification processes
The scolex, as you said, is very important for the identification of cestodes. What I consider to be key to preserving the scolex is dissecting the host's intestine with utmost care to expose the helminth then carefully lifting it out into a small Petri dish containing physiological saline, distilled or deionised water to wash it. If it is firmly attached to host tissue, you can cut around the point of attachment and lift the worm out of the intestine with a bit of host tissue which I find detaches during the processing of the worm. The tapeworms I have worked with generally detach from the tissue of the host quite easily without much fuss. If you are very careful you will find this easy to do with practice.
thanks Thelma for the valuable assistance, is the is any cues about putting the cestoda in the refrigerator for a while till the scolex detached?
To answer your question on placing the cestode in the refrigerator for some time, some people do this to allow the cestode relax before it is fixed and preserved. The scolex can detach from host tissue when the worm relaxes after the cold treatment. Some people also suggest that the cestode can be carefully wrapped around a glass slide during fixation so that it can be fixed flat.
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