What are the natural enemies of leeches? A rundown of the animals leeches fear most
Leeches is the common name for animals of the class Hirudinea in the phylum Annelida. Unlike other annelids such as earthworms or sandworms, most of these animals live as temporary external parasites. They are extremely hardy and can grow in ponds, lakes, streams and rice paddies, and they suffer from no diseases. There are many animals that can eliminate leeches, so let's take a look below at what the natural enemies of leeches are!
Crayfish
Crayfish are omnivorous animals with a tendency toward an animal-based diet, but their feeding habits differ slightly at different developmental stages. Newly hatched larvae feed on their own retained yolk, and soon afterward they feed on small zooplankton such as rotifers. As the individual grows larger, it feeds on larger zooplankton, benthic animals and plant debris. Adult crayfish eat both animals and plants, mainly plant debris and animal carcasses, and also feed on aquatic earthworms, chironomid larvae, aquatic plants, small crustaceans and some aquatic insects.
Ricefield eel
The ricefield eel is a fish of the genus Monopterus in the family Synbranchidae. It is a fierce carnivorous fish that mostly comes out at night to feed and can prey on various small animals, such as insects and their larvae, and can also swallow frogs, tadpoles and small fish. It mostly feeds by sucking, and whenever it senses a small animal near its mouth, it opens its mouth and sucks it in. It is greedy by nature, feeding most vigorously in summer, and in cold seasons it can go without food for a long time without dying.
Snakes
Snakes are true terrestrial vertebrates and feed mainly on rats (they also eat frogs, birds, etc.). They are unprepossessing in appearance, with strange shapes and colors, bodies covered in scales, heads and necks held high, bodies and tails swaying, moving quickly, calling for mates, and swimming across water, so they are really hard to make people like them. They like to live in shady, humid, sparsely visited places with dense weeds, luxuriant trees, tree holes or piles of rubble, firewood stacks and old ridge earth walls, and environments rich in prey. These are all places where they perch, appear and reproduce, and some snakes also live in water.
Frogs
Frogs refers to tailless amphibians such as frogs and toads. Taxonomically they belong to the class Amphibia in the subphylum Vertebrata of the phylum Chordata. Because their skin is bare, they cannot effectively prevent the evaporation of water from their bodies, so they cannot live without water or a humid environment throughout their lives and fear drought and cold. Therefore, most live in rainy tropical and temperate regions, and very few species are distributed in frigid zones. There are about 130 species of frogs in China, and almost all of them are experts at eliminating forest and farmland pests.
Cranes
Cranes is the general name for birds in the family Gruidae. They mainly inhabit wetlands such as marshes, shallow shoals and reed ponds, and feed mainly on small fish and shrimp, insects, frogs and shellfish, and mollusks, and also eat plant rhizomes, seeds and tender shoots. They are good at running and flying and like to live in groups. When sleeping, cranes often stand on one leg, twist their necks and turn their heads to place them on their backs, or insert their pointed beaks into their feathers. In China they are migratory birds. Apart from the black-necked crane and the red-necked crane, which live on the Qinghai-Tibet and Yunnan-Guizhou plateaus, the other cranes all live in the north.
Ants
Ants are a kind of insect with a great many species. More than 11,700 species are known in the world, and more than 600 species have been identified within China. They live very long: worker ants can survive from a few weeks to 3 to 10 years, while queens can survive several years or even ten years, and an ant nest can grow in one place for several years or even more than ten years. It should be noted that termites are not ants.