#Haemopis

[wormpharm]

A jolly horse leech crossed my path

[survivaicraft]

hey so the leech species named blood blood isnt even a sanguivore im losing my mind i need everyone to know about this

wdym fucking. haemopis sanguisuga. what do you mean. she eats worms

[thetinybutimportantthings]

Some friends have mine recently found a population of introduced Haemopis sanguisuga nearby, and they’re similarly large and active like medicinal leeches. Hoping to see if they can be cultured as an alternative to blood feeders.

if someone did want to keep leeches and did not mind being their food source, do you have any good resources or care sheets or know who would? Thank you for taking time to answer questions like these so eloquently and patiently

I do not! but they are fairly popular as pets and there are sites where medically “clean” leeches can be bought. they’re beautiful animals (with funny goopy personalities), but I have no interest in anything that lives in water so I hope someone else can chime in with some leech advice!

(I am keeping a handful of predatory marsupial leeches that arrived in a blackworm culture but they have so little to do with big mammal bloodsuckers I don’t think I’m qualified to answer. they live in 2cm of room temperature unfiltered water and eat the guts of a chopped up roach every 2 days, trash pet)

[shadsasaur]

TWO LEECH ENTER ONE LEECH LEAVE

hey so I've never seen a leech before today and one swam past me in a pond, found a branch, proceeded to devour a second one in front of me, and for a moment went Leech Ourobouros

leech can have little a leech as a treat

[reanimateobjects]

How's your leech?

Thanks for asking! I didn’t answer this for a long time, because I haven’t been the most caring leech keeper. Fortunately, leeches can manage periods in rather small and boring containers just fine. I recently decided to get a proper aquarium for it. And then I took a walk by the lake… It turns out there are leeches under almost every rock there! So now I have an aquarium with 11 leeches (if none of them has escaped yet). More wiggle room.

[dragonheadskilax]

my mind only has one thing in mind right now and it’s cute lil bugs. Here’s something from a publication about leech shedding

General morphology of the cuticle 💅 shedding 🪒 process in Hirudo sp. (A-C) and 🪱 🐛 Haemopis cf. sanguisuga (D-F). Arrows 🔀 mark the border of the shed cuticle ✂️💅. Abbreviations: ae, anterior end👄; oc, old cuticle🗑; ps, posterior sucker🍑.

[putridanox]

Haemopis sanguisuga

[dragonheadskilax]

Hey do you have any advice, or resources on hand for keeping leeches as pets? I have a lil predatory leech that came in with some black worms and I want to keep it, but all the resources I'm finding are short-term, like for keeping bait. Any tips? Your critters are adorable, and thank you

For non-bloodfeeding leeches the most knowledge I have for their care is from what other keepers post about them. Or the occasional scientific articles I’ve read in the past. Some people keep them in an aquarium set up and feed them a diet of fish food, an earthworm, blood worms (<— a common live food usually grown for fishes). Ribbon worms (Erpobdella obscura is a predator/scavenger) and are a common one to keep since, as you’ve mentioned, are regarded as a fish bait.

Unlike many leeches which are blood-suckers, E. punctata is a predator and scavenger. Among the invertebrates it eats are copepods, midges, earthworms and amphipods. This leech has been observed adhering to a salamander, thus being transported to a new location as well as benefiting from any food scraps discarded by the salamander. (x)

The success of the 2004 survey is attributed to selecting sites with abundant rocks and logs and vegetative growth which looked “good” for leech collecting. Five species were common to both surveys, with Alboglossiphonia and Theromyzon found in one of the surveys. (x)

The bait leech, Nephelopsis obscura, followed a 24-month life cycle in two natural ponds of northwestern Minnesota, Priem's Pond and Early's Pond. (x)

I’d recommend a freshwater (I’m assuming your worms are from a freshwater source) aquarium set up and keeping temperatures around 60 degrees F, like shown in these videos:

Colony of Haemopis sanguisuga, one having a buffet of blood worms - (X). I definitely recommend that instagram on about learning the care of many leech species

Someone’s pet ribbon leech tank - (X)

Thank you on the critter comment! And asking the question, since I’m always happy to share info out there on leech keeping facts that are otherwise not easy to find. I think leeches are the cutest things 🥺 it’s such a funny thing to have an animal regarded as horror and creepy when they’re in actuality timid, curious, simple, cute. All my leech does all day is sleep, yawn, hide if there’s vibrations or a shadow pass by, and wiggle.