“Spurn not the loopy leech
with language lurid
Annelids have much to teach
The anak murid”
Christine (my youngest daughter) and I first came to Sarawak in 2008 and knew we were going into the jungle. We purchased those leech guards which protected your ankles and legs from what we thought were vicious biting creatures. She was fearful of the blood sucking worms at first but by the end of the first day the leech guards ended up in the backpack as they were hot and a real impediment to hiking. Later, on another hike, an Irish friend of mine wore sandals ended up having blood soakedbare feet as the leeches attacked him most of all.
The Sarawak Museum Journal of 1959 was one of the first to describe the various leeches of Sarawak. The first known paper was published in 1917 in French in the Bulletin Monographie des Hemadipsines. Then there are a raft of others about how field tests work on repelling them. After most of the repellents did not work, they finally decided to describe them in various obscure publications.
The leech is classified in the same family as earthworms (Annelida). Where the worms suck in soil at one end and deposit it from the other, the leech has two biting surfaces one at each end. Both earth worms and leeches have compartments in between where there meals are digested.
The leech lives only on blood. They hang from the lower branches, almost to the ground. They then drop onto a human seemingly to climb through ones socks and consume the blood from the ankle. At least that is where I have found most of mine after stripping off a blood soaked stocking after I proudly boasted I had no leeches. You see, I go into the forest in shorts and pick off the leeches as they land on my legs, neglecting the sock-skin area.
How do they find me? They seem to sense the footfalls of a mammal and then ready themselves as they pass by dropping or connecting. At least this was the theory in 1959.
Our book” History of the Sarawak River Valley from Early Times to 1840″ is available as an e-book on Amazon. Com and Lulu.com. There are some Malay and English versions left in the Smart Bookstores in Kuching.
