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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 ...
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 ...
Turtle leeches are a genus, Ozobranchus, of leeches (Hirudinea) that feed exclusively on the blood of turtles. [2] Only two species—Ozobranchus margoi and Ozobranchus branchiatus—are found in the Atlantic coast of the United States and the Gulf of Mexico. Little is known about these leeches due to difficulties in studying their sea turtle ...
Macrobdella decora, also known as the North American medicinal leech, is a species of freshwater leech found in much of eastern North America in freshwater habitats, although there is one disjunct population in northern Mexico. M. decora is a parasite of vertebrates, including humans, and an aquatic predator of eggs, larvae, and other ...
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Limnatis nilotica is periodically reported as affecting humans and livestock, entering the host through the mouth, nose, and occasionally through the eye socket, the urethra or vagina. [5] In Iran, a pregnant cow showed respiratory distress and anaemia and was found to have a leech attached to the inside of the cheek and tongue; the cow was ...
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 ...
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 ...