From vampires to leeches, our world is filled with bloodsucking organisms of all sorts – real and fictional alike. Some use needle-like proboscises to…
From vampires to leeches, our world is filled with bloodsucking organisms of all sorts – real and fictional alike. Some use needle-like proboscises to extract life-giving blood while others simply sip fluid from mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and amphibians for sustenance. This behavior, known as “hematophagy” (from Greek aima “blood” and phagein “to eat”) likely developed independently multiple times over the Earth’s history and can be found among birds bats insects reptiles amphibians amphibians mammals alike.
Most vertebrates’ blood-feeding habits are so prevalent that we hardly notice it; mosquitoes use proteins and fats from our blood to develop their eggs; but other hematophagous animals ranging from ticks that spread Lyme disease to louse and mite carriers of bedbugs, lice and fleas also consume human blood in large numbers, transmitting dangerous diseases including typhus fever, malaria dengue fever hepatitis and West Nile virus among many other conditions.
Some blood-feeders such as flies and deer flies are parasites that attach for long periods, draining away vital liquids from their hosts’ bodies. Others, like wolf spiders, hunt down and kill prey before devouring its carcass for sustenance. Ants, termites, and bees take only what is necessary from their hosts’ hosts.
No matter their method, blood-sucking animals face similar hurdles when extracting blood. First there’s the issue of avoidance: avoidance by their host can often require using drill-like mouthparts with sharp teeth for puncturing skin or drilling through blood-filled veins. They must also circumvent blood clotting; for this purpose they often employ chemicals which prevent their mouthparts from sticking after having taken their meal out of your flesh.
Nutrition presents another significant hurdle. B vitamins in blood are vital to animal metabolism, yet some hematophagous species cannot synthesize enough of them on their own to sustain themselves; blood-feeders such as the sandfly, black fly, horsefly, mosquito and tsetse fly must take swift and decisive action when taking nutrients from their victims.
The Field Museum’s new exhibition Blood Suckers: Legends to Leeches celebrates the sucking, sipping and drinking of blood by various living and dead organisms, from legends to leeches. Discover larger-than-life models of some blood-sucking beasts as you learn their names; play a game to test your ability not to get bitten by mosquitoes; listen to Northwoods mosquito swarm recordings while exploring an historical vampire hunting kit to understand where fact meets fiction in our fascination with these creepy crawlies!