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Why the World Needs Bloodsucking
Creatures
By Follow @brigitkatz Send to Kindle
Ina sprawling gallery of the Royal Ontario Museum, curators and technicians
crowded around two large coolers that had recently arrived at the Toronto
institution. Wriggling inside the containers were live sea lampreys, eel-like
creatures that feed by clamping onto the bodies of other fish, puncturing through
their skin with tooth-lined tongues, and sucking out their victims’ blood and
bodily fluids. Staff members, their hands protected with gloves, carefully lifted
one of the lampreys and plopped it into a tall tank. It slithered through the water,
tapping on the glass walls with its gaping mouth, rings of fearsome teeth on full
view.
Having explored its new environment, the lamprey settled onto the pebbles at
the bottom of the tank. It will remain on display until March as part of a new
exhibition exploring the oft-reviled critters that bite, pierce, scrape and saw their
way through flesh to access their favorite food source: blood.
The exhibition, called “Bloodsuckers,” includes displays of other live animals—
mosquitoes, ticks and leeches—interspersed throughout the gallery. And dozens
of preserved specimens, arrayed down a long, curving wall, offer a glimpse into
the diverse world of the roughly 30,000 species of bloodthirsty organisms across
the globe. Among these critters are vampire moths, which can pierce the thick
skins of buffalo and elephants. Vampire snails target sick and dying fish, making
for easier prey. The oxpecker birds of Africa pluck ticks and other insects off
large mammals—and then slurp blood from their hosts’ sores.
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Sebastian Kvist, curator of invertebrates at the Royal Ontario Museum and co-
curator of the exhibition, knows that these animals are likely to make some
visitors shudder. But to him, blood-feeders are the loveliest of organisms, the
result of a refined evolutionary process. Leeches are a particular favorite of
Kvist’s, and his research focuses on the evolution of blood-feeding behavior, or
hematophagy, in these predatory worms. Sometimes he even affectionately lets
the leeches in his lab gorge themselves on his blood.
“When you have live animals in your care, they demand some respect,” he says. “I
think that it is giving back to the leech what we're getting from them to donate
\
our warm blood.”
|
A
Leeches are still used today in a wide variety of medical procedures, from alternative therapies to FDA-
sanctioned surgical uses. (Robertus Pudyanto vi Getty Images)
“Bloodsuckers” opens in a corridor bathed in red light, where an installation
featuring three strands of red blood cells dangles from the ceiling. Blood is a
hugely abundant food source, so it makes sense that wherever vertebrates exist,
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animals would arise to steal their life-sustaining fluids. Blood-feeding likely
evolved repeatedly over the course of our planet’s history—“perhaps as many as
100 times,” according to Kvist. Bloodsucking creatures have no common
ancestor, as the behavior has cropped up independently in birds, bats, insects,
fish and other animal groups—a testament to its evolutionary value.
“T can think of no other system that’s [so] intricate that has evolved separately,”
Kvist says. “And it makes blood-feeding as a behavior even more beautiful.”
Subsisting on a blood-heavy diet is tricky, however, and relatively few creatures
have managed to retain this ability over time. “Thirty thousand [bloodsuckers]
out of the roughly 1.5 or 1.6 million species [of animals] that have been described
is a very, very small number,” Kvist says. “But it turns out that being able to feed
on blood puts tremendous strain on your physiology, on your morphology, and
on your behavior.”
For one, blood lacks B vitamins, which all animals require to convert food into
energy. Many bloodsuckers thus host microscopic bacteria inside their bodies to
provide these essential nutrients. Because blood is so iron-rich, it’s toxic to most
animals in large amounts, but habitual blood-feeders have evolved to break it
down.
Getting to the blood of a living creature is no mean feat either. Blood-feeding
organisms have different ways of accessing their preferred snack. Mosquitoes, for
instance, pierce the skin with their long, thin mouthparts, while certain biting
flies boast serrated jaws that slash through flesh. But all of these methods risk
being met with a deft swat from the host. To counteract this problem, some
blood-feeders, like leeches, have mild anesthetics in their saliva, which help them
go unnoticed as they feed. Certain creatures like vampire bats, lampreys and
leeches also produce anticoagulants to keep their victims’ blood flowing,
sometimes even after they’re done eating.
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q
al
Display of an oxpecker, a bird that feeds on the blood of large mammals. (Jesse Millns, Courtesy of the Royal
Ontario Museum)
“A leech feeds five times its body weight in blood, up to ten times sometimes,”
Kvist says. “If that blood congealed or clotted inside its body, then the leech
would fall to the bottom [of the water] like a brick.”
Kvist and Doug Currie, the Royal Ontario Museum’s senior curator of
entomology and co-curator of the exhibition, hope museum visitors gain a
newfound appreciation for the elegance of bloodsucking organisms. Humans
share a long and complicated relationship with blood-feeders. Leeches, for
instance, were once seen as a life-saving force, and are in fact still used by
medical experts today after certain types of surgery that overfull parts of the
body with blood. But at the same time, we are unnerved by creatures that steal
blood—a wariness that has persisted for centuries, as suggested by the fearsome
bloodsuckers that populate folklore traditions around the world.
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A natural history and culture institution, the Royal Ontario Museum also
explores how blood-feeding, a trait that exists in nature, has crept into the
human imagination and morphed into something fantastical. Monsters abound
within the gallery. There are models of the chupacabra, a beast rumored to drain
livestock of their blood, and the yara-ma-yha-who, which originated in the oral
traditions of Australia and boasts blood suckers on its fingers and toes.
These creatures do not directly resemble any real blood-feeding animal. Instead,
they speak to our “innate fear of something taking our life force,” says Courtney
Murfin, the interpretive planner who worked with curators to craft the
exhibition’s narrative.
Dracula, arguably the most famous of all
How Vampire Bats Suck Blooc the fictional bloodsuckers, may have a
more tangible connection to the natural
world. Legends of vampires predate Bram
Stoker’s 1897 novel—visitors can see a first
edition copy of the book at the exhibition
—but the notion that these undead beings
could transform into bats originated with
Dracula. Vampire bats, which live in Mexico
and Central and South America, feed on
the blood of mammals and birds. They
were first described in 1810 and
qe documented by Charles Darwin in 1839.
The animals may have influenced Stoker’s
supernatural count.
Depictions of vampires in today’s popular culture run the gamut from cool to
sexy to goofy. We can have fun with them now, Murfin says, because we know
they aren’t real. But when vampire lore arose in eastern Europe in the early
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17008, the beasts were a source of true terror. Confusion about normal traits
observed in decomposing bodies, like swollen stomachs and blood in the mouth,
led to the belief that corpses could rise from their graves to feast on the blood of
the living.
“They started digging up graves and staking the people to the ground ... so they
couldn't stand up at night,” Kvist says.
Fears about losing their blood to vampires did not, however, dampen Europeans’
enthusiasm for bloodletting, an age-old medical practice that sometimes involved
applying leeches to the skin. The treatment can be traced back to the ancient
world, where it arose from the belief that draining blood helped rebalance the
body’s humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Bloodletting reached its
peak in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when a “leech mania” swept across
Europe and America. Pharmacies stored the critters in ornate jars—one is on
display at the museum—and H7rudo medicinalis, or the European medicinal leech,
was harvested to the brink of extinction.
Bloodletters also had other ways of getting the job done. One corner of the
exhibition is packed with a grisly assortment of artificial bloodletting tools:
scarificators, which, with the push of a lever, released multiple blades for opening
up the skin; glass cups that were heated and suctioned onto the skin, drawing
blood to the surface; smelling salts, in case the procedure proved a bit too
overwhelming for the patient.
While medical professionals no longer believe that leeching can cure everything
from skin diseases to dental woes, leeches are still valued in medicine today.
Hirudin, the anticoagulant in leech saliva, is unrivalled in its strength, according
to Kvist. It’s synthesized in labs and given to patients in pills and topological
creams to treat deep vein thrombosis and prevent strokes. Leeches themselves
make appearances in hospitals. They're helpful to doctors who perform skin
grafts or reattachments of fingers, toes and other extremities. Newly stitched
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B,
LL, CL es ik
A.19th century “leech jar,” used to hold and display leeches in pharmacy windows. (Jesse Milns, Courtesy of the
Royal Ontario Museum)
arteries heal more quickly than veins, so blood that is being pumped into the
reattached area doesn’t flow back into the body, which can in turn prevent
healing.
“Stick a leech on, and it will relieve that congestion of the veins,” says Kvist, who
also studies the evolution of anticoagulants in leeches.
Earlier this year, Kvist received a call from Parks Canada asking for help with an
unusual conundrum. A man had been apprehended at Toronto’s Pearson
International Airport with nearly 4,800 live leeches packed into his carry-on
luggage, and officials needed help identifying the critters. Kvist took a look at
some of the leeches, which appeared to have been smuggled from Russia, and
pinpointed them as Hirudo verbana. Because they are threatened by over-
harvesting, this species is listed by the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, meaning it cannot be transported
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without a permit. Just what the man was
Leech Feeding on Dr. Seba... ;
doing with the bloodsuckers is unclear, but
Kvist says he claimed to sell them for “New
Age medicinal purposes.”
“There is a larger-than-we-think
ao underground network of people that use
leeches to treat a variety of ailments,” Kvist
says. The Royal Ontario Museum took in
around 300 of the contraband critters, and
a few dozen are presently lounging in a
display tank at “Bloodsuckers.”
While leeches have long been valued for
their healing properties—scientifically valid or otherwise—some bloodsuckers
are better known for their ability to transmit serious illnesses. Certain species of
mosquito, for instance, spread West Nile, Zika and malaria. Ticks transmit Lyme
disease. The exhibition does not shy away from exploring the dangers associated
with blood-feeders, and it offers advice on how to protect yourself from
infection.
“Some fears are real,” Kvist says. “Disease, unfortunately, is a necessary
consequence of blood-feeding,”
Most blood-feeding animals, though, do not pose a serious threat to humans. In
fact, bloodsuckers are vital to the health of our planet. Mosquitoes are an
important food source for birds. Fish eat leeches. Even sea lampreys, which are
invasive to the Great Lakes, can bring essential nutrients to the aquatic habitats
where they spawn. And like all species, blood-feeders contribute to the Earth’s
biodiversity—a richness of life that is fast declining due to factors like pollution,
climate change and habitat degradation.
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A visitor views a display of preserved blood-sucking specimens. (Jesse Milns, Courtesy of the Royal Ontario
Museum)
Many, many animal groups need to be part of conversations regarding
biodiversity, Kvist says, but he and his colleagues opted to spotlight the
bloodthirsty ones. The museum hopes to help visitors feel more comfortable
living alongside these animals—even if they aren’t willing to volunteer an arm for
a leech’s next meal.
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