News Animals

Can leeches leap? New video may help answer that debate

For more than a century, biologists have clashed over leech acrobatics

A closeup of researcher Mai Fahmy's face during an expedition to Madagascar to, in part, find leeches. She succeeded, as the one feeding on her chin attests. She's wearing a green hooded raincoat and a tent is visible behind her.

Shown with a land-dwelling leech feeding on her chin, researcher Mai Fahmy has opened a new chapter — with cell phone videos — of a century-old debate about whether leeches can jump. (She’ll take a leech over a mosquito bite any day.)

Mariah Donohue

By Susan Milius

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.