Animal of the week | Blood-sucking worms know how to jump from trees, and now the jump was caught on video

In summer good for walking in nature. Even foreign visitors can boast that there is no danger in the Finnish forest. There aren’t any particularly shoe-like animals to watch out for here.

It’s different in the jungle. You have to be careful at every step there. For example, a lurking leech might jump from a tree onto your neck.

Researchers discovered in Madagascar that the local leeches, or leeches, actually jump, and recorded their jumps for video too.

Juotikas stretches himself on top of the magazine, as if sniffing which way this would go. Then it bends like a cobra, and bounces from the leaf to the ground.

The drunkards acrobatic skills have puzzled researchers for a long time. Arabian explorer Ibn Battuta already in the 14th century in Sri Lanka described drunkards who jumped from trees to attack passers-by. However, the movements of the worms have not been captured on video before.

Apparently, the habit is very common, because the researcher Mai Fahmy it didn’t take long to wait by the camera for the worms on the plant’s leaves to start bouncing. He wrote a report on the subject For the journal Biotropica.

It has not yet been proven that drunkards would actually stalk their victims in a branch and deliberately jump on people or animals, but it is also possible. For a blood-sucking animal, it is of course useful to be able to catch the target quickly and efficiently.

Scientists, who are much needed in the rainforests, have found that drinkers can sometimes fall on their necks. Recently, a member of a research group got one in his eye.

Jumpy The woodpecker represents a land-living species called Chtonobdella fallax. We don’t have them, and the only blood-sucking leech in Finland has also almost disappeared from Finland.

You can come across a horse-drinker in the water, but it is not interested in humans and does not suck blood.