Parents are being urged to stop feeding their children tadpoles after a video went viral which showed a boy eating the wriggling creatures.
The clip, filmed in China, has had more than 3 million views and shows a toddler being spoon fed the animals.
Footage shows the child's mum holding a white bowl full of water with about seven of the creatures swimming around it.
She gets one in a spoon and holds it to her child's mouth who opens it none the wiser and eats the live tadpole.
The creatures are the larvae of either frogs, toads, newts or salamanders - which are very common in the country.
And in the clip the boy, who is thought to be just a year old, eats every spoonful he is given.
His mum can be heard telling him: "They're little fish . Little fish," as she encourages him to gobble them down.
Parents in rural China are thought to believe tadpoles bring health benefits to young children, including improved immune systems and resistance to poison or venom.
Some of the earliest official documents recommending the eating of live larvae for health reasons date back to the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644 AD), when herbalist Li Shizhen's "The Compednium of Materia Medica" (1596) suggested the practice.
However, Shenzhen Children's Hospital paediatrician Pei Honggang has warned about the dangers of consuming the creatures.
Images provided by the medic from Shenzhen City in China's southern Guangdong Province show one of his young patients who is suffering from an infection of spirometra erinaceieuropaei - a tapeworm infecting domestic animals and humans.
"This is a patient suffering from a tapeworm infection in his abdomen - the type that causes epileptic seizures," he said.
He noted that the patient had also been fed tadpoles, which led to his parasitic infection.
"Parents feeding their kids live tadpoles should watch the video of this tapeworm," Doctor Pei added.
The medic said he was aware of the recommendation appearing in the 1596 herbalism volume, which helped laid the foundations of modern-day Traditional Chinese Medicine practices.
But he added: "The fact is eating live tadpoles leads to parasitic infections. Tapeworm larvae can make its way into the body by eating tadpoles, frogs, snakes - anything raw."