As we tidy away the Dracula capes and glow-in-the-dark plastic fangs for another winter, one notorious blood sucker has had a particularly good year. For the first time the medicinal leech Hirudo ...

Leeches are making a medical comeback, at least in Russia. Seen as a cheaper option in an underfunded health system, leeches are sometimes used in place of expensive blood thinners or as a homeopathic ...

A 430-million-year-old fossil has rewritten leech history, showing they are at least 200 million years older than previously believed. Unlike today’s bloodsucking leeches, their ancient ancestors ...

Once dismissed as an antiquated cure-all, leech therapy is now validated in modern surgery and is regaining attention in integrative and traditional medicine.

The post Not All Leeches Drink Blood. Some Hunt, Scavenge, and Eat Snails appeared first on A-Z Animals. Leeches have a reputation as bloodsucking creatures, and that has not exactly helped their ...

It’s not exactly the kind of therapy you’d expect to get at the hospital: a black, slippery, thirsty leech picked up by forceps from a bucket of its brethren and placed directly onto your skin. But ...

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Mark Siddall: Dear Inge, Yes. Stay very very still. They are ...

“There is no doubt that the medicinal leech is one of the most beautiful of animals,” wrote British zoologist Arthur Everett Shipley in 1914. Yes, the leech: blood-sucking, marsh-dwelling, annullated ...

Leeches might seem like relics of a bygone age of medicine, but they haven’t outlived their usefulness to people yet. The freshwater leech Helobdella austinensis can eat its weight in snails every day ...

A sweeping survey of Placobdella leeches from American alligators across the southeastern United States reveals a conserved ...

As we tidy away the Dracula capes and glow-in-the-dark plastic fangs for another winter, one notorious blood sucker has had a particularly good year. In Ireland, the leech was driven to extinction in ...