For decades, scientists have posed one interesting question about leeches—can they jump? While the idea of jumping leeches might sound like it's only the stuff of nightmares—I still can't forget those ...

White men can’t jump, but terrestrial leeches can. This is now a scientific fact; after centuries of anecdotal reports, the parasites have been caught on video leaping from leaves in the Madagascan ...

WALKER, Minn. — Minnesota's third-largest lake has a namesake only an angler could love: the leech. Earthworm's ugly aquatic cousin. Those slimy, crawly creatures straight out of a horror film. But ...

BALTIMORE - Marc Miller survived a motorcycle crash in October near his Baltimore County, Md., home, but his foot had been dragged along the pavement and badly damaged. That injury would require both ...

Using leeches to suck the blood out of a person might sound medieval, but it’s actually a medicinal practice still used today at many trauma hospitals. Though only used in a handful of cases, the ...

A new study presents video evidence that at least one species of terrestrial leech can jump, behavior that scientists have debated for more than a century. Researchers from the American Museum of ...

Leeches are some of the most hated creatures in the world, even though most people rarely (if ever) see one. We even use the word as an insult. A leech is a parasite, someone who lives only to suck ...

The first time I was bitten by a leech, I was swimming in a West Virginia river. I remember the scene perfectly: I crawled out to dry off and tried to wipe the mud off my knees, but the leech wouldn’t ...

A new report in the journal Nature unveils three of the first genomes from a vast, understudied swath of the animal kingdom that includes as many as one-quarter of ...