Peru Vacations Are So Much More Appealing

A new species of leech, discovered by an international team of scientists, has a preference for living up noses. Researchers say the leech can enter the body orifices of people and animals to attach itself to mucous membranes.

They have called the new blood-sucking species Tyrannobdella rex which means "tyrant leech king". Zoologist, Dr. Mark Siddall from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, was quick to recognize it as a new species. He said it had some very unusual features, including just one single jaw, eight very large teeth and extremely small genitalia. "The leech could feed on aquatic mammals, from their noses and mouths for example, where they could stay for weeks at a time."


The creature was first discovered in 2007 in Peru when a specimen was plucked from the nose of a girl who had been bathing in a river. The creature lives in the remote parts of the Upper Amazon and has a "particularly unpleasant habit of infesting humans", the scientists say. Studies also revealed that it had "a preference for living up noses"