Jun 11, 2007

Foot-long

Phlimm sent me this photo of the Giant Amazon Leech. This parasite gets to be a foot long. I'm just glad the movie Stand By Me wasn't filmed in the Amazon basin.

Photo source: Amazing Planet

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

You did this just to mess with my head, didn't you, Wombat?

Great. You're paying my therapy bill, ya jerk!

*desperately thinking of nice things like ponies and clean linen and warm sand and dark chocolate...*

--TwoDragons

Anonymous said...

;-)

--TwoDragons

Anonymous said...

Oh Denita, it gets worse! Had to look this up--these suckers get to be up to 18 in. long and almost 4 in. wide. Instead of biting and sucking, they grab on and insert a long probiscis into the host to suck the blood. Geez, you'd never get them off...aarrgg...

Anonymous said...

Um. What do leeches have to do with Stand By Me? I've never seen the movie ... Am I missing somethin'?

Anonymous said...

OK: An advisory. If you click the link and Google "Amazon leeches," do not, repeat DO NOT do the image search. You will discover that there IS a leech more disturbing than the giant one ... Much more. O.o

(..."Nasal leeches?" WTF...)

Anonymous said...

also:
http://zbio.net/pictures/leech_s.jpg

Anonymous said...

Noooooo!!!!! Nasal leeches!!!! Did you read about how to remove one if it gets stuck in your nose, or worse--in your throat??!!! Ahhhh!! And nematode, I've been searching for a good pic of the Amazon leech and couldn't find one--this is great.
But the grossest parisite photos are still these. I love them (from a huge distance). http://uglyoverload.blogspot.com/2007/02/two-mouths-to-feed.html#links

Anonymous said...

In "Stand by Me" the kids had to go wading in some swampy water and came out covered with leeches. Kind of like "African Queen".

Arachnophile said...

I had to check out all those sites! DANG! I thought I'd heard about every cool parasite there was but nasal leeches are a new on to me.

I advise all of you who can't look away from this post to read "Parasite Rex," IT'S FREAK'N AWSOME!

The whole proboscus thing is new to me too. This site is to full of edutainment. ;)