Study on the anatomy features of local leeches, Hirudinea manillensis (green leech)

HirudinaeManillensisalso called as 'Buffalo leech' or LintahKerbau are distributed in several countries in Southeast Asia such as Southern China, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia (Department of Fisheries Malaysia, 2009). In this study, the anatomy and features of Hirudinaemanillensis or buffalo leech were observed and it is recorded. All the external and internal anatomy of the leech is identified to know the different with others species of leech. Two different leeches are analyzed in order to find the differences. The leeches used are green and dark brown leech. For the external anatomy, as body pattern, color of the body, size of the body, size of the sucker, body length and width, mouth, number of teeth and eyes, absence of papillae and number of annuli can be determine and for the internal features, organ such as crop, rectum, male and female reproductive organ and testes sack can be found. For comparison between two types of leeches, the only different that can be distinguished are color and pattern of the dorsal and the color of the abdominal. Green leech have simple pattern with only 5 stripes with 3 different color namely green, brown and black while for dark brown leech it have more complex pattern. The pattern isconsisting of many square shapes on the dorsal.