Slideshow: The whirling fish kill Andrea Gawrylewski visits a western Maryland fishery as workers haul nearly 40,000 pounds of rainbow trout infected with whirling disease out of the raceways. Please download the Adobe Flash Player to view this content: Advertisement   Rate this article Currently 1.75/5 1 2 3 4 5 Rating: 1.75/5 (4 votes ) Comment on this article Return to Top comment: RE: Animal Feed? by Andrea Gawrylewski [Comment posted 2007-04-19 21:45:06] A good question above. The parasite that causes whirling disease, Myxobolus cerebralis, does not infect humans or other non-aquatic animals. This is likely because a significant part of the parasite's lifecycle is spent free-floating in the water column. You can read more about the lifecycle here: http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/52956/. Return to Top comment: Animal feed? by Deepti Zaremba [Comment posted 2007-04-18 13:58:34] Does anyone know if whirling disease adversely affects other species? If so, then why are these fish being used as animal feed? Seems kind of weird to feed diseased fish to other animals.