Luggage found stuffed with 5,000 leeches

Of the hundreds of species of leeches, only a few have a taste for human blood and will hungrily latch onto a bare leg or arm, explains Mark Siddall, a leech expert and the curator of invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City. (The museum also identified the two species of leech in the haul, Lupert says.) Pressed for more information about the cloak-and-dagger nature of leech smuggling, he declined to comment on the circumstances of prior incidents, referring National Geographic to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency responsible for overseeing wildlife imports and exports.

Source: www.nationalgeographic.com