Leeches Help with Wildlife Studies

Scientists have realized that they can use the blood from leeches to determine what types of wildlife have been in the area.  The blood from a leech contains the DNA of animals from which it has taken blood.

This is extremely helpful to wildlife biologists studying difficult to find or endangered species.  A leech will come right to any human standing in a stream, so they are simple to collect.  The DNA of the bitten animals remains in the gut of a leech for quite a while, so a DNA analysis can be very valuable.

For example, 25 leeches were collected in a Vietnamese national park.  The researchers discovered the DNA of a small-toothed ferret badger in one of the leeches - and this was exciting because there had never been a sighting of that species of badger in that national park.

So leeches can be an inexpensive, simple tool in the toolkit of biologists wherever leeches naturally live.