Official News page 8

REAL LIFE NEWS: BLOODSUCKING INSECTS DO HAVE A USE

by Hazed

Staying with a medical theme, workers at London Zoo have come up with a novel way to collect blood samples from the animals: they use a bloodsucking insect called a kissing bug.

The critters crawl onto the animal and release a pain-reducing enzyme as they bite and suck the blood from veins. This sounds yucky but is a lot less stressful for the animal than traditional methods of taking blood samples using syringes and needles, where the animals often have to be sedated. It will also make collecting blood samples from small animals a lot easier, because their size makes their veins inaccessible.

The pilot project, which has seen blood collected from a hippo, cheetah, giraffe, elephant and white rhino, is being carried out at London and Whipsnade Zoos in the UK.

Having taken the blood sample, the bugs are then humanely killed. Well, I guess we need to consider the welfare of the large, attractive animals like elephants and cheetahs, rather than the welfare of nasty bloodsucking bugs!

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