What would you do to catch a fish? Would you use a leech for bait? They’re slimy, they’re wriggly and they suck. But there’s more to leeches than bait and bloodletting. Here’s what we found when we went digging for leeches.
The Secret Life of Leeches
In October, 2014, a woman from Edinburgh, Scotland, thought she had a blood clot in her nose. When the obstruction started wriggling, she discovered a three-inch leech up her nostril.
Five-thousand years ago, Egyptians used leeches to cure everything from fevers to flatulence. Today, the world’s largest leech farm is in Udelnaya, Russia, where 29 technicians raise 150,000 leeches. The worms are used for everything from medical procedures to cosmetics.
In the famous leech scene from The African Queen, the long black worms Katherine Hepburn pulls off Humphrey Bogart were actually rubber stand-ins. However, the close-up of a leech on a man’s chest was a live sucker stuck to a professional leech handler.
English-born celebrity Robin Leach, host of the eighties television show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, gained fame by leeching onto movie stars and millionaires. Since then, Leach and the show have been parodied by everyone from Meek Mill to Jimmy Buffet. Currently, Leach is the host of Las Vegas Sun’s celebrity watch blog, Las Vegas Deluxe.
While horror movies like Attack of the Giant Leeches certainly stretch the truth, the largest leech ever found measured a nightmare-inducing 18 inches.
There’s more to leeches than bait and bloodletting. | Feature Photo: István Asztalos/Pixabay
Cures flatulence, you say???
…
…
… challenge accepted.