Telmophagy

Telmophagy, also known as "pool sucking", is a feeding method of blood-sucking insects (telmophagous insects) that use coarse mouthparts to tear a wound in the skin in order to feed on the blood, lymph and cell fluid that emerges. In contrast to capillary suckers, which specifically pierce blood vessels to absorb blood, telmophages leave a kind of "blood puddle" on the skin.

Examples of telmophages are horse flies, black flies and ticks. The term "telmophagy" is derived from the Greek word "télma" (puddle, swamp) and "phagein" (to eat).

Although the term is still somewhat unfamiliar in German, it is increasingly being used to describe this specific type of blood intake.

The opposite of telmophagy is solenophagy, in which insects pierce directly into a blood vessel (capillary) to actively absorb the blood from this vessel. They use very thin mouthparts (e.g. a proboscis) to pierce the capillaries directly and only suck blood.