As we tidy away the Dracula capes and glow-in-the-dark plastic fangs for another winter, one notorious blood sucker has had a particularly good year. In Ireland, the leech was driven to extinction in ...

For centuries, observers have told tales of leeches leaping through the air in pursuit of their next meal—with written records of the creatures’ gravity-defying feats dating as far back as the 14th ...

A 430-million-year-old fossil has rewritten leech history, showing they are at least 200 million years older than previously believed. Unlike today’s bloodsucking leeches, their ancient ancestors ...

It's the beginning of the spooky season, which means ghouls, ghosts, and bloodsuckers abound. One of the most famous bloodsuckers in nature is, of course, the leech. These parasites feed on blood and ...

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 ...

Bloodsucking land leeches are tiny but tenacious creatures: they can use their suckers to crawl in search of prey and perhaps can even fall on their targets from trees. But scientists have long ...

Leeches might seem like relics of a bygone age of medicine, but they haven’t outlived their usefulness to people yet. The freshwater leech Helobdella austinensis can eat its weight in snails every day ...

A chance video by a grad student relishing her first big field trip might help resolve an argument that’s raged among biologists for more than a century. The question: Can leeches jump? Yes, at least ...