Describes the different species of leeches, their physical characteristics, behavior, and life cycle.

A look at the life cycle and behavior of leeches.

Many different kinds of animals have adopted a parasitic life style on the skin and gills of marine and freshwater fishes, including protozoans, flatworms, leeches, a range of crustaceans and even some vertebrates (lampreys). There is a parasitic barnacle, described first in the 19th century by Charles Darwin, fish lice that change sex and bivalve molluscs parasitic only when young. This book explores for the first time in one volume, the remarkable biology of these little known and frequently bizarre animals. The following closely interwoven themes are considered for each group of parasites: how they find their hosts, how they attach, feed and reproduce, the damage they inflict and how the host’s immune system retaliates. Based on the British fauna, but extending where appropriate to examples from North America, Australia and elsewhere, the book is essential reading, not just for the professional parasitologist, but also for anyone interested in fishes and in this neglected field of British natural history. With the enquiring naturalist in mind, terms and concepts are explained as they arise, backed up by a glossary, and the text is liberally illustrated. An introductory chapter on fish biology sets the scene and common fish names are used throughout, as well as scientific names.

Armed with razor-sharp teeth and capable of drinking many times its volume of blood, the leech is an unlikely cure for ill health. Yet that is exactly the role this worm-like parasite has played in both Western and Eastern medicine throughout history. In this book, Robert G. W. Kirk and Neil Pemberton explore how the leech surfaces in radically different spheres. The ancients used them in humeral medicine to bring the four humors of the body—blood, phlegm, and black and yellow bile—back into balance. Today, leeches are used in plastic and reconstructive surgery to help reattach severed limbs and remove pools of blood before it kills tissue. Leeches have also been used in a nineteenth-century meteorological barometer and a twentieth-century biomedical tool that helped win a Nobel Prize. Kirk and Pemberton also reveal the dark side of leeches as they are portrayed in fiction, film, and popular culture. From Bram Stoker’s Dracula to a video game player’s nemesis, the leech is used to represent the fears of science run amok. Leech shines new light on one of humanity’s most enduring and unlikely companions.

A “sardonic and brutal” journey into Serbia’s underground secret societies and conspiracy theories (TheIndependent). The place is Serbia, the time is the late 1990s. Our protagonist, a single man, writes a regular op-ed column for a Belgrade newspaper and spends the rest of his time with his best friend, smoking pot and talking about sex, politics, and life in general. One day, on the shore of the Danube, he spots a man slapping a beautiful woman. Intrigued, he follows the woman into the tangled streets of the city until he loses sight of her. A few days later, he receives a mysterious manuscript whose contents seem to mutate each time he opens it. To decipher the manuscript—a collection of fragments on the Kabbalah and the history of the Jews of Zemun and Belgrade—he contacts an old schoolmate, now an eccentric mathematician, and a group of men from the Jewish community. As the narrator delves deeper into arcane topics, he begins to see signs of anti-Semitism, past and present, throughout the city, and he feels impelled to denounce it. But his increasingly passionate columns erupt in a scandal culminating in murder. Following in the footsteps of Foucault’s Pendulum, Leeches is a cerebral adventure and a journey into the underground worlds of secret societies and conspiracy theories.

Describes the physical characteristics, habitat, and types of worms, including leeches, earthworms, and tapeworms.

Leeches (Hirudinea): Their Structure, Physiology, Ecology and Embryology presents a concise account of the vast knowledge, particularly in the realm of physiology of the Hirudinea. The text provides the various aspects of the life of leeches (Hirudenea). The first three chapters are devoted to the survey of the different families of leeches and the description of Hirudo medicinalis (Medicinal leech). The physiological aspects of leeches such as its circulatory and respiratory systems, muscles, nerves, sense organs, and reproductive processes are elaborated in detail in subsequent chapters. Leech nutrition, behavior, locomotion, and the ways in which the distribution and abundance of leeches is affected by factors of the environment, both living and non-living are elucidated as well. Zoologists will find the book very useful and informative.