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Tech

The Symphony of a 'Leech-Nado'

They're beautiful, just admit it.

​Leeches, despite being often thought of as bloodsucking little tubes, are a marvel. Remarkably diverse, leeches are found all over the world in a wide array of environments—of the hundreds of species described, some live in freshwater, others in the sea, and some have evolved to live on land. Some species have even been observed to feed their young.

Not all leeches suck blood, but some of those that do have become critical in modern medicine. "They are the tool of choice in relieving post-operative hematoma in microsurgical procedures, directly responsible for the successful reattachment of many a finger, ear, and toe," wrote Dr. Mark Siddall in 2000.

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Siddall, who's the curator of the division of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History, is likely the world's foremost leech expert, and is certainly the most visibly enamored with that branch of the annelid tree.

The screenshot of the leeches up top looked a bit like notes on sheet music, so I transcribed them into music for a violin. Screenshot: ​Solomon David/​YouTube

"This is beautiful. Look at that," Dr. Siddall said, speaking of the animals' curious undulating locomotion, in a 2006 profile by Carl Zimmer. "It's a very complex behavior. The only other animals that swim in a vertical undulating pattern are whales and seals."

"Leech-nado" thus seems to be a poor title for this hypnotic video by ​Solomon Da​​vid of leeches showing off a form of locomotion that's been honed by tens of millions of years of worm evolution. Instead, I'd call it a leech symphony, which was only partially influenced by the fact that the screenshot above kind of looks like sheet music—which, naturally, had to be put to the sound of a digital violin. It might seem grandiose for worms fluttering around in effluvium, but I'd argue it's an entirely fitting soundtrack for a picture of a form of life that's near perfection.