The oldest leech ever discovered has turned out to be a shape shifter of expectations, preserving a body plan that looks ...

Andrew Plucinski’s leeches are picky about skin. When offered the chance to bite a person who bathes in smelly soap they recoil, even when they’re hungry. Leeches prefer their humans unseasoned. In ...

White men can’t jump, but terrestrial leeches can. This is now a scientific fact; after centuries of anecdotal reports, the parasites have been caught on video leaping from leaves in the Madagascan ...

Kelly didn’t explain his… gathering with his “friends.” Leeches do have medical applications, though, as gross as it may sound. They have been used for thousands of years to treat skin diseases, ...

The fossil leech compared with a modern leech. Double arrows indicate the large caudal sucker used for attachment, single arrows indicate body annulations. A newly described fossil reveals that ...

Ken Grewe plunges his hand into the bottom of a small, black plastic bag - as if he were searching for remaining treats in a sack of candy. What Grewe is seeking is anything but sweet. Like he has for ...

WALKER, Minn. — Minnesota's third-largest lake has a namesake only an angler could love: the leech. Earthworm's ugly aquatic cousin. Those slimy, crawly creatures straight out of a horror film. But ...

A 430-million-year-old fossil reveals that the first leeches were ocean predators, not bloodsuckers. The discovery radically ...