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Blood-sucking leeches use their anterior suckers to connect to hosts for feeding. Once attached, they use a combination of mucus and suction to stay in place while they inject hirudin into the hosts' blood. In general, blood-feeding leeches are non host-specific, and do little harm to their host, dropping off after consuming a blood meal. Some ...
Some, such as the European Piscicola geometra, take a blood meal and then drop off the host and hide somewhere while they digest the blood; [8] some, mostly in marine or estuarine habitats with soft substrates, attach themselves temporarily to a crustacean after leaving their fish host; others remain attached to a fish semipermanently. Leeches ...
Large adults can consume up to ten times their body weight in a single meal, with 5–15 mL being the average volume taken. [5] These leeches can live for up to a year between feedings. [6] Medicinal leeches are hermaphrodites that reproduce by sexual mating, laying eggs in clutches of up to 50 near (but not under) water, and in shaded, humid ...
These leeches have five pairs of eyes, with the last two separated by two eyeless segments. The family is monotypic , containing only the subfamily Haemadipsinae , though as the family can apparently be divided into two or three distinct lineages, at least one of the proposed splits , while not a distinct family, might be a valid subfamily.
Like other leeches, H. verbana has anterior and posterior suckers that allow it to attach to a range of substrates in both air and water. It can even attach to porous, air-permeable substrates. In the wild, this ability may be relevant for attaching to porous rocks or the furry skin of host animals.
Glossiphoniid leeches exhibit remarkable parental care, the most highly developed one among the known annelids. They produce a membranous bag to hold the eggs, which is carried on the underside. The young attach to the parent's belly after hatching and are thus ferried to their first meal. [6] Certain Glossiphoniidae parasitize amphibian species.
In the English Channel, small common sole may have one or two leeches on them while large fish may have forty or more of the parasites. [2] Adult leeches attached to the underside of fish lay eggs on the seabed in locations where the fish like to semi-bury themselves in the sediment; the eggs have stalks and are anchored to grains of sand.
Terrestrial leeches primarily feed on mammals, though the New Zealand species have adapted to rely on birds. The Open Bay Islands leech feeds primarily on the feet of nesting seabirds, especially Fiordland penguins (Eudyptes pachyrhynchus). Leeches are able to ingest several times their body weight in blood, and can take months to digest it. [4]