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
Jun 11, 2007
Foot-long
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Chinese
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Russian
Spanish
9 comments:
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
;-)
--TwoDragons
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...
Um. What do leeches have to do with Stand By Me? I've never seen the movie ... Am I missing somethin'?
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...)
also:
http://zbio.net/pictures/leech_s.jpg
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
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".
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. ;)
Post a Comment