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 ...

Photomacrograph of the medicinal leech Hirudo verbana. Leeches are aquatic, blood sucking, segmented worms, which mainly feed on mammalian blood. In a single feed they can consume over 3 times their ...

have announced the completion and results of their work to sequence the genome of Hirudo medicinalis, a European leech, and one of the most prominently used medicinal species. The team focused ...

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 ...