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Hematophagy (sometimes spelled haematophagy or hematophagia) is the practice by certain animals of feeding on blood (from the Greek words αἷμα haima "blood" and φαγεῖν phagein "to eat"). Since blood is a fluid tissue rich in nutritious proteins and lipids that can be taken without great effort, hematophagy is a preferred form of ...
In feeding on blood, the flies use their mouthparts to initiate bleeding from the host. They then suck up the exposed blood. Like practically all blood-feeding parasites, they inject biochemicals that inhibit blood clotting, plus some that stimulate host mast cells to produce histamine; this distends capillary vessels, thereby promoting blood flow.
Haemotoxins, hemotoxins or hematotoxins are toxins that destroy red blood cells, disrupt blood clotting, and/or cause organ degeneration and generalized tissue damage. The term haemotoxin is to some degree a misnomer since toxins that damage the blood also damage other tissues. Injury from a haemotoxic agent is often very painful and can cause ...
After reproducing through binary fission, the epimastigotes move onto the rectal cell wall, where they become infectious. Infectious T. cruzi are called metacyclic trypomastigotes. When the triatomine bug subsequently takes a blood meal from a host, it defecates—its waste containing T. cruzi propagation stages. As a result, Trumper and Gorla ...
Fleas are wingless insects, 1.5 to 3.3 millimetres (1 ⁄ 16 to 1 ⁄ 8 inch) long, that are agile, usually dark colored (for example, the reddish-brown of the cat flea), with a proboscis, or stylet, adapted to feeding by piercing the skin and sucking their host's blood through their epipharynx. Flea legs end in strong claws that are adapted to ...
The prey is usually sucked in and swallowed whole. Some Rhynchobdellida however suck the soft tissues from their prey, making them intermediate between predators and blood-suckers. [38] Leech attacking a slug. Blood-sucking leeches use their anterior suckers to connect to hosts for feeding.
The whole point of vampirism is sucking other people's blood—living at other people's expense." [147] Disgusting and terrifying parasitic alien species are widespread in science fiction, [148] [149] as for instance in Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien.
Their food source is the blood of other animals, a dietary trait called hematophagy. Three extant bat species feed solely on blood: the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus), the hairy-legged vampire bat (Diphylla ecaudata), and the white-winged vampire bat (Diaemus youngi). Two extinct species of the genus Desmodus have been found in North ...