Leech Researcher

摘要

For mark Siddall and his colleagues from the leech lab at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the primary tool for field research is a revealing pair of shorts. "Fieldwork involves wading through swamps, allowing leeches to crawl onto us," explains Siddall, the museum's curator of invertebrates, whose subjects are increasingly being used in reconstructive surgery and in the development of anticoagulants. In the past decade, Siddall has led leech walks everywhere from Argentina to Thailand. In Madagascar during the rainy season, he says, the forest floor comes alive. "You can collect hundreds on your body just over one walk." To remove a sucker, he simply peels off the edge with his fingernail, since burned leeches tend to regurgitate into the wound. Why, God, why? Siddall has discovered or studied dozens ofrnnew species, including a leech that prefers frogs and one that likes hippo anus. And the danger? "So far, no leech-borne diseases have been identified," he says. "And to the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever been exsanguinated"-which is to say, entirely drained of blood.