The “business end,” the mouth, is located within the front sucker. They are eaten by crayfish, salamanders, birds, turtles (turn-about is fair play), carnivorous aquatic insect larvae, and fish (which is why they’re used for bait). Many species of leeches, like sharks, zero in on prey that splashes around in/disturbs the water. Leeches that feed on small invertebrates like snails, or on amphibian eggs may swallow their prey whole, extract the bodily fluids, and spit out the crunchy-bits. The mouth arrangement depends on the diet-some families are jawless, some toothless, and some feed through a tube. There are about 65 species in North America-some are scavengers, some prey on their aquatic neighbors, and those that are blood-suckers ( haematophages) often specialize in one group, like invertebrates, turtles, frogs, ducks, or fish. Unlike their (mostly) terrestrial cousins, the earthworms, leeches are flattened in cross section like earthworms, their bodies are soft but very muscular.Īll of the 700 or so known species of leech are carnivores (“liquid-a-vores,” to coin a phrase), but few feed on mammal blood and even fewer on humans. They can’t hear, but they have a good sense of taste, and sensitive skin. They have eyespots along the dorsal side of the first few segments (though their vision is poor) and a brain and a sucker at each end. They’re shaped a lot like planarians, of previous BOTW fame but are not related. Leeches are in the phylum Annelida, the segmented worms. People may not recall the characters’ names or whether he stopped drinking or she started drinking or whether the boat went over Victoria Falls or even who won WWI, but they always remember the leech scene. Let us pause for a moment to salute that classic movie, The African Queen. Remember what the naturalists at Riveredge tell the kids-“Scientists don’t say ‘EEiiiooouuuwwww!’” Scientists say “Oooohhhhh, how interesting!” What follows is a major overhaul of a BOTW from May, 2008.
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