Our thinking

Spooktacular specimens

24 February, 2020

With Halloween upon us, and the new series of Dracula coming soon, we were inspired this week to write about something a little more gruesome… Animals that make your skin crawl but that are incredibly useful to humans. Notably, leeches and rats.

Disgusting to some, leeches come in very handy in medicine and their biology is fascinating. In the 1800s, leeches were considered state-of-the-art medicine and, nowadays, they are still a medical marvel. In today’s world, they are used in surgery, can ease the pain of arthritis, and it has even been discovered that the properties of leech saliva can help to prevent the colonisation of cancer cells.

Meanwhile, in parts of Africa and, more recently, Cambodia, rats have been used for years to detect hidden landmines, which injure hundreds of people every year. More effective than, both, humans and dogs, the African Giant Pouched Rats are trained to sniff-out the explosive TNT – succeeding in a matter of minutes, versus days, when compared to humans’ metal detector method. After a hard day’s work, the animals rat-ire to their cages to do it all again the next day. The same rats can even identify the tuberculosis disease from saliva samples!

Animals are amazing and certainly put us to shame when it comes to our senses. So, perhaps when you can’t help but wince at the creepy-crawlies during the Halloween festivities, appreciating their extraordinary abilities might take the edge off.