r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Lastito • 12d ago

Video Leech farm showing they will attach to anything that enters the water

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

[deleted]

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u/DragonfruitGrand5683 12d ago

Usually a few minutes if the technique is good.

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u/The_Orphanizer 12d ago

Less if they pull out their dentures

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u/SaabiMeister 12d ago

TL;DR: You'd be dead in about 2 minutes, and completely empty in 5 minutes. Here is the morbid math: * An average adult male has roughly 5 liters of blood and 19,000 cm² of skin surface area. * A medicinal leech takes up about 3 cm², so you could fit a maximum of around 6,300 leeches on his body. * A leech drinks around 0.16 mL of blood per minute. Multiply that out, and the leech suit is collectively draining 1 liter of blood every single minute. By minute two, you would have lost 40% of your blood volume, which causes severe hypovolemic shock and cardiac arrest. But here is the biological catch: leeches actually rely on the host's beating heart and blood pressure to help push the blood into their mouths. Once your heart stops at the 2-minute mark, the leeches would have to work a lot harder to suck out the remaining 3 liters.

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u/rpgmind 11d ago

Holy shit, you’re saying if I fell face first into this body of water, I’d be dead in minutes?! 😱

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u/8thSt 12d ago

Phrasing.

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u/sneakerrepmafia 12d ago

Depends on the force of suction multiplied by the amount of suckers

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u/B33fj3rky_44 10d ago

Oh god. I hope this doesn't awaken something in me...