On May 6, 2020, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) announced that a new freeze-resistant Trichinella species had been discovered in wolverines by Agricultural Research Service scientists and their colleagues. Trichinella are parasites that cause the disease trichinosis (formally known as trichinellosis), which people can get by eating raw or undercooked meat from infected animals.

This is the first species of Trichinella discovered since 2012, and the 13th species identified since the genus was discovered in 1835. By sequencing the newly discovered Trichinella species’ complete genome, it was shown that its DNA is about 10 percent different from any other Trichinella. By comparison, human and chimpanzee DNA only differ by 1 percent.