Achi news desk-
Ticks are parasitic bloodsuckers capable of spreading deadly diseases, and they are becoming more and more common. Here’s what you need to know about them.
Ticks 101
Ticks are spiders, close cousins ​​of mites and more distant cousins ​​of spiders. There are more than 800 species of ticks found worldwide, with 84 recorded in the United States. However, only a handful in the U.S. bite and transmit disease to humans. The most common are black-legged ticks (also known as deer ticks, but they feed on many animals besides deer), lone star ticks, American dog ticks, and brown dog ticks.
After a tick egg hatches, it goes through three life stages: larva, nymph and adult. Both male and female ticks feed on blood by inserting their barbed, straw-like mouthparts into their host’s skin (unlike mosquitoes, which only bite if they are females preparing to lay eggs). However, only ticks drink enough to be swallowed.
“When you see a super big, plump female, that means she’s going to lay eggs and start that life cycle process all over again,” said Kate Chapman, an extension educator and urban entomologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
These arachnids vary dramatically in size and appearance based on their age and how much blood they have drunk. “The black nymph tick, if you put the ones that aren’t fed on a poppy seed bagel, they blend in quite nicely,” said Dr. Thomas Mather, a professor of public health entomology at the University of Rhode Island and director of the school’s vector disease and resource center. TickEncounter Meanwhile, a mature female of the same species can swell to the size of a pea.
Tick ​​bites and diseases
Although there are months when different species and life stages are more active, you can be bitten by a tick at any time of the year. If you find a tick attached to you (or your pet), you should carefully remove it.
“The recommendation is to use tweezers, grab the tick by the head as close to the skin as possible and pull it straight out,” said Chapman. “We don’t want to twist, because we can leave part of this mouth part embedded in the skin. And we don’t want to grab the body because if you press the body the tick may wake up more, which means you increase your chance of getting tick-borne disease.”
Your impulse may be to squish the newly removed tick, but it’s best to soak it in hand sanitizer or alcohol and save it to show to an expert or at least take a picture. This way you can identify which tick it is and how long it has been feeding; The University of Rhode Island’s TickEncounter website has tools based on color, size, and geographic location.
It is important to identify the tick because certain species carry different diseases. They pick up bacteria, viruses, and other germs from the blood of infected hosts, and when they bite a new victim, they can transmit these pathogens.
Larvae and nymphs of black-legged ticks, for example, often feed on white mice, which can carry a bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi. When a tick feeding on one of these infected mice feeds on a human, it can pass along this bacteria, which causes Lyme disease.
Lone star ticks, however, do not feed on white mice and consequently do not carry Lyme. (However, they carry other disease-causing bacteria, and their bites can introduce a sugar molecule into the bloodstream that makes people allergic to red meat.)
In a September 2023 study, researchers identified a protein that appears to play a large part in how certain ticks — including the deer tick and the western black tick — become infected with the harmful bacterium Anaplasma phagocytophilum before spreading it to human hosts and causing anaplasmosis, which is different from Lyme disease.
Anaplasmosis can cause severe headaches, fever and chills, vomiting and fatigue, according to Cedars-Sinai.
Understanding this protein may give scientists a better sense of how to stop the spread of disease through ticks, the study said. But there is a lot more research to be done before they get there.
Prevention of tick bites
The diseases carried by ticks can be debilitating or even life-threatening, and the risk of infection increases the longer the tick accompanies you. While there are several treatments available, it is best to avoid getting bitten in the first place.
Various studies have suggested factors that could play a role in tick attraction, including a recent paper showing a link between tick attraction and static electricity in the lab. And while ticks are attracted to cues like carbon dioxide that animals exhale, they tend to wait rather than actively seek out their prey.
“Contrary to popular belief, they don’t fall out of trees. They just sit on the edge of a tall blade of grass, for example, that might be hanging somewhere, and they’ll stick their front leg out. We call it foraging,” Chapman said. “They’ll wait for that host to brush right by them, so that’s mostly how people get ticks: They brush it off; it attaches to their leg or their clothes.”
Insect repellents containing DEET, picridine and oil of lemon eucalyptus have been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for protection against ticks. However, these chemicals work differently against ticks than against mosquitoes.
For example, DEET “burns the feet of ticks, and they fall off because their feet are on fire,” as opposed to interfering with the tick’s ability to find its prey the way DEET affects mosquitoes, Mather said. Moreover, “once the product dries, it doesn’t burn as much, so it really doesn’t last long for ticks.”
Instead, Chapman recommends preventing tick bites by covering your skin and tucking the bottom of your pants into your socks. Ticks are killed even in half an hour in the dryer, so throw your clothes away immediately when you get home, before you even wash them.
Moreover, “we prefer to wear clothing treated with permethrin — it’s much, much more effective” than bug spray, Mather said. “It blocks nerve conduction in the ticks, and it makes them overexcited and then they just lose function pretty quickly, and that eventually kills them.” Depending on where you live, he said, it might also make sense to research tick control that lives in your yard.
These precautions may seem extreme, but in Mather’s eyes they are the way of the future, because “we live in a world of ‘more ticks in more places’, and more people are exposed.”
Climate change may play a role in the spread of ticks, but Mather said he believes the influx of parasites has more to do with white-tailed deer becoming more common in areas with higher human densities. As a result, he said, “more people are exposed to ticks that breed on white-tailed deer.”
Despite the prevalence of ticks and the seriousness of the diseases they can cause, Chapman stressed that with proper precautions (for you and your pets—ask your vet for tick preventatives), they shouldn’t hold you hostage inside your home.
“Yes, ticks exist. Yes, they can be a public health concern, but we don’t want you to let ticks keep you indoors,” she said. “You should still be able to go outside and enjoy nature, but you just have to, again, do those tick checks. So take some time. Do it.”
