Kissing bug used to collect zoo blood samples

Kissing bug blood sample being taken from a giraffe

(Photo courtesy www.bbc.co.uk) 

Wildlife continues to make a revival in medical diagnostics and treatment – leeches are back in favor for blood letting and wound management along with maggots for cleaning wounds.  Now we have blood sucking bugs being used for blood collection.

Kissing bugs are being used to collect blood from zoo animals in a pilot project underway at two London zoos.  This method has been used to successfully collect blood samples from a hippo, cheetah, giraffe, elephant and white rhino. The Kissing bug gets its label from silently and painlessly collecting blood from a human victim’s lips and eyelids.

The Kissing bug crawls onto the animal and releases a pain-reducing enzyme as they bite and suck the blood from veins.  The “stress-free” method simplifies collecting blood from animals, who do not have to be sedated.

London Zoo’s veterinary officer Tim Bouts said:

“This pioneering procedure means we can take a stress-free blood sample from an animal that we would otherwise need to sedate or anesthetize. The process is non-invasive and painless for the animal. It might take somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes to get a decent sample dependent on how hungry the bug is, how quickly it finds a blood capillary and how thick the skin of its host is.”

The bugs are humanely killed after the blood samples are collected.

Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com