Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
Glossiphoniidae are a family of freshwater proboscis-bearing leeches. These leeches are generally flattened, and have a poorly defined anterior sucker . Most suck the blood of freshwater vertebrates like amphibians , crocodilians and aquatic turtles , but some feed on invertebrates like oligochaetes and freshwater snails instead.
Leeches are hermaphrodites, and mating may take place on or off the fish host, but in either case, the cocoon, usually containing a single egg, is deposited elsewhere, usually stuck to a stone or piece of vegetation, or even to the carapace of a crustacean. When the egg hatches, the juvenile leech has about a week to find a suitable fish host ...
This leech is unique in that the adult attaches to the host but does not itself feed on it; instead, the young that it was brooding transfer to the host to take their first blood meal. [ 3 ] References
The family Glossiphoniidae contains one of the world's largest species of leech, the giant Amazon leech, which can grow up to 45 cm in length. [12] Many species show extended parental care, keeping eggs in nests or pouches and caring for and feeding the young. [2] [13] They feed on both vertebrate and invertebrate animals. [4]
A handful of families have taken children as young as 2 years old to Mount Everest Base Camp in recent years. Three of them describe the experience. ... the whole family pulled leeches off their ...
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 ...
Haementeria ghilianii is a species of leech in the Glossiphoniidae family, comprising freshwater proboscis-bearing leeches. Colloquially, they are known as the Amazon giant leech . Following its initial description in 1849, additional details were provided based on specimens from French Guiana in 1899, after which the species was largely ...