Leeches (Land Leeches) are found only in the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia( Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea,Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos Borneo, etc), Wallace (group of Indonesian islands separated by deep water from the Asian and Australian continental shelves), Australia (North Australia near Queensland rainforest and down south in Victoria), Melanesia (Those small Island near Papua, Indonesia and north Australia), Madagascar, India and the Seychelles. (Most leeches can easily tunnel through the weave of your socks.) Leech proof socks are the best way of denying access to your bare skin. Also, the potential for infection should not be underestimated this can be a real problem in the tropics especially as most bites will occur around the ankle area where shoes and socks tend to rub. Over the years and after many bites some people develop a bit of a reaction to leech bites and the itching can drive you crazy. (Although this can happen anyway.) Lastly, you can resort to chemical means – anything that the leech won’t like such as vinegar, lemon juice, salt or tiger balm (a type of ointment).
LEECH BLOOD SKIN
You can just physically pull it off but then it may leave its mouthparts embedded in the skin potentially leading to infection. After all, once it is attached it makes no difference when you remove it. You can simply wait till it drops off, thereby avoiding touching the slimy thing. If you find a leech attached to your body the first thing to do is don’t panic! The only thing a leech does is steal a tiny bit of your blood, look revolting and make a bit of a bloody mess. They use a combination of mucus and suction (caused by concentric muscles in those six segments) to stay attached. They all have a ventral sucker formed from the last six segments of their body, which is used to connect to a host for feeding. Leeches’ bodies are composed of 34 segments. They attach to their hosts and remain there until they become full, at which point they fall off to digest. Leeches are clitellate when breeding and are derived from some oligochaete ancestor. But add water and they will rapidly spring into action.
Leeches easily dry out and go into a torpid state if they do. Secondly, they can detect you by your body temperature. So if you brush against a tree and tread heavily they will feel, rather than hear, you coming. Leeches are responsive to light and mechanical stimuli. Unlike the old wives tale, you can pull leeches off in mid-feed in a panic, although it is easier to nonchalantly roll it around until it lets go, and then flick it off. Both inject an anti-coagulant, so the blood continues to flow for some time after the leech drops off. The tiger leech has a small bite that you can feel. You cannot feel when brown leeches bite as they inject a kind of anesthetic when they attach. There are two types of leeches – neither of which is poisonous or carry disease. They then latch on for a meal of blood, letting go when they are fully engorged. Leeches are inchworm-sized creatures that stay on low lying bushes and the forest floor waiting for unsuspecting warm blooded creatures to pass by.
The ankles are the most common places for bites since the leeches generally are quite low when you pick them up, and they can also bite through the loose weave sock material. Leeches will crawl into places of maximum warmth before biting. If you are standing still to take a breather, you would find at least two or three leeches somersaulting up your pants, or dropping themselves from the overhanging leaves (sound scary). Leeches have heat-seeking sensors that are pretty perked up and sensitive to human body heat. There are leeches just about everywhere, somersaulting and quivering in all direction. As you make your way in the wet rainforest trail, you will realise and learn how just how blood-thirsty they are. The leeches in the rainforest are particularly “vicious” and really blood-thirsty.
In Malaysia, generally there are three types the dark brown ground based common leech, the green-reddish-with-yellow-streaks-sticking-under-the-leaf-type (Tiger Leech), and the Kinabalu Giant red leech (found in Borneo). One of the little issues of trekking in the rainforest, is really those pesky little leeches.
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