Bank of Ceylon

Few creatures, entities or people have gathered quite so much disdain and disappropriation as has the leech.

Not Darth Vega, Cinderella's stepmother or even the Bank of Ceylon have won so much naturally occurring dislike or disgust.

For these tiny, god-made creatures also trigger a revulsion, an antipathy that is innate, evolutionary even, as if some deep, almost forgotten behavioural immune system had been awakened to issue screams, wrinkle noses, prompt nausea and even a drop in one's heart rate.

For as reactions go, most people's reaction to leeches is about as out of proportion as are most headlines in the London Daily Mail to the facts themselves.