With black flies, while the adult females may feed on larger animals like us, the larvae are an abundant food for other aquatic animals, Currie says: "And so without them we certainly wouldn't have the fish that we'd like to go fishing for. It feeds waterfowl and plays a really important role in our northern ecosystems. Obviously, leeches have been important in medicine - they're still used to relieve blood congestion after surgery to reattach fingers and toes, and their powerful blood thinners were key to making the first human kidney dialysis possible in , Kvist says.
Currie hopes the exhibit will give people the information they need to live "in harmony" with bloodsuckers. She has a PhD in chemistry. Pseudonyms will no longer be permitted. By submitting a comment, you accept that CBC has the right to reproduce and publish that comment in whole or in part, in any manner CBC chooses.
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We reserve the right to close comments at any time. So, you have a leech sucking your blood, ey? Well, that sucks. And for the record, once full, a leech will drop off itself, and usually in about a half hour.
So if you can stomach it, just wait it out for the cleanest removal. Once the leech is off, clean the bite with water and an antiseptic, dry the area, then clean again, ideally with hydrogen peroxide, which can reduce the effects of the anticoagulant. If you roughly yank a leech off your skin, you run the risk of causing it to vomit out potentially bacteria-filled blood, as mentioned before. In many leeches, the protein Chlorocruorin is the dominant protein.
This protein causes the greenish colour. The blood is a darker green when oxygenated. Some marine worms have green blood whereas others like the subtly named, penis worm , have purple blood. Horseshoe crabs have blue blood that is hugely important for modern medicine. And the Antarctic Ocean has its own fascinating weirdo in the ocellated icefish, with its colourless blood. Just like Alien, leeches have two sets of mouths. Instead, they have one mouth on their face and another mouth on their butt.
Their face mouth is for eating, whereas the butt mouth is for grabbing while they feed. In species with jaws, both sets of mouths have teeth. They inch along by grabbing the ground with their face and biting down. Then they slide the butt mouth up behind their face mouth and bite the ground. Then the the body throws the face mouth forward again. Fortunately for them, most leeches are capable swimmers. Although they tend to prefer shallow water.
In short it would take to of standard medicinal leeches to bleed a human dry. The doctors were able to remove a 7-centimeter 2. After the leech was removed, the boy's symptoms disappeared. In , another group reported in the European Journal of Pediatrics the case of an year-old boy in central Iran who presented at a rural health care center with blood in his mouth and a sore throat that had lasted for two weeks.
The boy had been given antibiotics for his sore throat, and the problem did not respond. Inspection of his mouth revealed a black, circular blob, about 2 centimeters by 3 centimeters 0. Doctors applied lidocaine spray a topical painkiller and then pulled the leech out with blunt forceps. Questioning revealed the boy had been swimming in a lake near his village. After the leech was removed, blood continued to ooze out of the wound for about an hour, but otherwise, the boy was all right.
In , a doctor named Demeke Mekonnen published an article in the Ethiopian Journal of Health Science relaying the case of a 7-year-old boy in Ethiopia who presented with bloodstained saliva and shortness of breath. At his home, someone had tried to treat him with a traditional medicine made of tobacco leaves and flax seed, to no effect. In the report, Mekonnen indicates that the boy had contact with an unprotected source of spring water that was also used for watering animals. Laryngoscopy showed some kind of foreign body at the top of the trachea.
The child was put under general anesthesia, and the leech was removed with forceps. After the extraction, the boy seemed to have a full recovery.
Laryngeal and pharyngeal leech infestations are rare these days, especially in developed countries with easy access to clean water, but it can still happen.
Possible symptoms of a leech in the throat are difficulty swallowing, sore throat, vomiting blood, coughing up blood, a "sense of having a foreign body' in the throat, melena dark, sticky feces, indicating the swallowing of blood , a feeling of suffocation or shortness of breath and stridor harsh or raspy breathing. If think you've got a leech in your throat right now, don't panic. Just see a doctor as soon as you can. As you may have gathered from the cases mentioned above, pharyngeal or even laryngeal hirudiniasis is not necessarily a death sentence, though it can be dangerous if the parasite obstructs any part of the airway.
If the doctor knows what to look for and has a pair of blunt forceps on hand, chances are good that you'll be all right.
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