It's a great time of year to meet with the giant Amazonian leech. Its kind is just emerging from the bottom muck, where they dug themselves in to wait out the three-month dry season. They'll be ...

For the first time the medicinal leech Hirudo medicinalis has been bred in captivity at London zoo, part of a longer-term project to help this fascinating if unloved creature. Once widespread in ...

But waiting in the wings is something formidable. I was shocked to see the leeches eating the toadlets Naturalist and all-round wildlife guru John Walters sent us to a remote pool in Dartmoor ...

LEECHES are adapted by their structure and physiology to an ectoparasitic, blood-sucking mode of life. Some have secondarily become predators, but none has obvious adaptations to endoparasitism.

In this short film Dr Michael Mosley interviews a surgeon who is pioneering the use of leeches in medical research. He allows a leech to attach to his arm and suck his blood, the mouth of the ...