cordyssa my beloved

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

bogleech

This is the clearest photo I have ever seen of a leech’s teeth.

Nearly all fictional leeches mistakenly have a whole ring of teeth in a gaping mouth but the real thing has an almost microscopic throat opening - they only drink liquid, after all.

(my website’s front page leech is a monster anyway)

bogleech

The tooth ring thing is definitely confusion with lampreys, though there’s a bit more to them than that, too. The assumption a lot of cartoons have is that an iris of teeth closes up to bite into the skin, but what lampreys have is kind of like a “scrubby brush” of teeth they use to scrape away their host’s flesh. Their actual mouth opening is also very small, and has “upper” and “lower” beak-like teeth in it!

Here’s a photo but I know they’re super trypophobic to a lot of people so I’m tagging:

You can see how there isn’t really a “ring of fangs” to bite down with but just a whole beautiful expanse of teeth for rasping and scraping.

I’ve mentioned this before but the closest thing in nature to that cartoon iris ring of fangs are the five teeth of a sea urchin. This tooth structure’s common name is “Aristotle’s Lantern:”