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2. Japanese Mountain Leeches
Seeing a leech is sometimes icky enough for most people, but what if the leeches actually jump out at you?
Japanese mountain leeches (Haemadipsa zeylanica), locally called yamabiru in Japan, are part of a family of “jawed leeches.” These leeches have five pairs of eyes, with the last two separated by two eyeless segments. Even though leeches are usually found in water, Japanese mountain leeches actually have evolved to live on land and in treetops. They can jump out at their victims at quite high speeds and even climb trees to fall on their prey.
Japanese mountain leeches have even been known to gnaw through clothes and shoes of travellers. How could they not when they have a very powerful jaw (sometime even two or three) with thousands of small teeth which inject an anti-coagulant and a numbing compound into your blood.
