[00:00:00] Great to have you with us. And today's topic is all about spring and a little critter that comes out this time of year, very hungry. And that is the tick. I'm going to focus on the North American ticks that are out for this podcast because we're starting to encounter more and more tick populations surging around the country, mainly because of global warming.
[00:00:36] Ticks are amazing creatures in the sense that they've been around for millions of years. They predate human beings and they develop this ability to feed on blood in order to nourish their eggs and pass on life. So we're going to talk about We're going to talk about how they actually are attracted to animals, people the type of ticks that are out here in North America and what you can do and what is being done about ticks.
[00:01:13] There's a lot of stuff going on. Why? Talk about ticks to begin with because like I said, they're becoming more and more prevalent. Ticks are extremely adaptable to environments. They can live in the city. They can live in the country. It doesn't matter. Years ago we had some mulch delivered to our place here in Chicago.
[00:01:39] My wife Annie was pregnant at the time. Sure enough, in that mulch was a tick that bit her and the the ring formed everything. So while carrying our child, Aine, she had to go and get treated. for a tick bite the possibility of Lyme disease. It wasn't a happy moment for either of us.
[00:02:03] Luckily nothing came out of it. There was no Lyme disease , but it was a scare. And I grew up in Woodstock. There were several different kinds of ticks and we're going to talk about those kinds of ticks.
[00:02:19] I guess they're beneficial, somehow. All this stuff is beneficial. But let's let's get into it. First of all, let's talk about the history of ticks. Why is this creature so successful? It's a very simple creature. It's an arachnid. It's a spider. Unlike the spider this arachnid will go after warm blooded animals and drink their blood.
[00:02:46] And that is how they are able to reproduce. What they like to do, To find and cling on to is usually furry animals, though animals developed Long after ticks were around. The first ticks can go all the way back 120 million years ago, back to when there was Gowanda land. That was when it was one big supercontinent.
[00:03:15] That's the time of the dinosaurs. It is believed that they probably feasted on your local Tyrannosaurus rex. They've been very successful. With the extinction of the dinosaurs didn't mean anything for ticks. They just adapted to the new kids on the block. Mammals, of which we are. Ticks have not changed that much over time.
[00:03:43] They are pretty much a type of species that is very successful . They have the proboscis which is like a long protruding snout, if you will. And what they'll do is they will cut into the skin and they're able to spit glue. That allows them to attach themselves to the host.
[00:04:14] When they do that, they're also emitting a couple of chemicals into the body of the host. One's an analgesic. prevents any the host from really detecting the tick. So you don't feel the tick's bite. The other fights the immune system any kind of antibodies, any kind of clotting mechanisms, any sort of thing that would fight an open wound is negated by a tick.
[00:04:46] Free flow of blood. That's where the bad news is because there are various parasites that live in a tick and the different tick species that like to go inside the host and wreak havoc. That's why we have stuff like Rocky Mountain spotted fever, why we have Lyme's disease. So that's a brief history on the tick.
[00:05:10] The tick clings on to the host. The mammal, the host, and very imperceptible. If you've ever felt a tick crawling up your leg, you can barely feel it. I remember being way up on the Eagle river in Wisconsin. I was fishing, and I just felt like I had grass, basically my legs.
[00:05:38] And paid no heed to it. I ended up having 13 ticks on my body. Luckily, none of them attached. But, they are very tenacious, they will be able to attach onto you. They can climb up your legs, usually loose fitting clothing, the ticks will find a way to get in.
[00:06:02] How do ticks detect people? This time of year is the right time of the year. Once it gets a little warm the trees haven't totally leafed out, but you have grass, you have ticks looking for a host so they can feed on the blood, and then lay eggs.
[00:06:24] They lie in wait, and what they do is, they'll be on a piece of grass, or they'll be on a leaf, and they'll extend their back legs up, and those back legs act like a hook . The actual term for it is called questing. If they sense an animal coming toward them they'll assume this kind of position.
[00:06:53] There's a lot of stuff that they key off of. For example scientists feel that they can go by carbon dioxide. Here's an interesting point static electricity attracts ticks. They can go by body heat. According to Wikipedia, and I quote, While questing, ticks cling to leaves or grasses by the third and fourth pair of legs. They hold the first pair of legs outstretched, waiting to grasp and climb onto any passing host. Sounds fun, right? This is interesting. Some ticks have evolved for different animals.
[00:07:28] So you have the moose tick, and the moose tick will be able to climb to a height, on a tree, on a bush, that is going to be the right height to get onto a moose. A dog tick, or a deer tick, much lower. The bad news for us humans is that we're right in that range where we can be picked up by anything. The ticks will grab on , and end up drinking the blood of the host. How long does it last? It all depends. Different ticks have different times. Supposedly you can go anywhere from a couple of hours to weeks. And this brings up a problem. For example back in 2022 this is just a fantastically horrific statistic.
[00:08:23] Winter ticks are also called the moose tick. We had a very warm winter. And The moose ticks just went gonzo. No winter kills, none were frozen, nothing like that.
[00:08:40] So they jumped onto the moose and that calving season of moose, about 90%, nine zero of the moose calves in Maine were killed by ticks. That's how bad it is. Okay. Now, Maine is a bellwether state . The moose population is one of the largest populations in the lower 48. The Maine moose population is one of the most successful.
[00:09:14] So for 90%. of the calves killed. And they were finding upwards of 40, 000, even 90, 000 ticks on one moose alone. That's not good. Okay. These animals would try to get rid of the ticks. They would try to scrape the ticks off and that would also have them be susceptible to dying from the elements.
[00:09:46] It's pretty gross. That is the extreme on one end, right? Where you have an animal that really doesn't have any means of being able to take care of itself. However, When you have and moose are not alone, you have other animals that are susceptible to ticks, you have your deer population.
[00:10:09] You have any kind of rodent, any kind of warm blooded furry animal. And this is where it gets very dicey with human beings. It's just that these animals have more of an interaction with humans. A cat, a dog, any kind of domesticated pet that's out in the woods can bring home this pest to you.
[00:10:31] I want to walk through what the CDC has to say about ticks. And we're going to point out the different kinds and what diseases they carry. And we'll pick that up on the opposite side of the break. You're listening to Strung Out.
[00:10:58] Okay, we're back. And if you're still with me, we're talking ticks. We have 700 species of hard ticks. 200 species of soft ticks throughout the world. The hard tick is pretty much the type of tick that we have in the United States. There are some soft ticks both families can be found . Here are The most prevalent ticks that bite human beings and transmit disease.
[00:11:33] The American dog tick. The American dog tick is a tick that has an off white shield. They're very mottled. The adult females like to bite the human being, during spring and summer. The pathogens that are carried is Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and then tularemia, and tick paralysis.
[00:12:02] Okay? The American dog tick is found east of the Rocky Mountains, throughout eastern Gulf Coast, along the Pacific Coast, into Canada, parts of Alaska. American dog ticks are found in areas with little or no tree cover, such as tall grassy fields. Low lying brush and twigs and walkways and trails. So a very common kind of tick That's the tick that we see quite a bit When we're out walking in pastures and such that would be the kind of tick that we used to get on our sheep and when we would be shearing the sheep You would come across these ticks embedded deep in the wool of the animal. Really hard to kill a tick. You have to smash them with a hammer or burn them. That was the prescribed method for hand picking off ticks off of sheep and then killing them that way. The Black Legged Deer Tick. This is a tick that is pretty much in the woods all over the United States.
[00:13:19] The bottom of that tick looks reddish orange, and then the rest of it is black. It's very tiny. It's much smaller than the dog tick, I feel. This tick is the one that is able to Transmit Borrelia Ferri, the agent of Lyme disease, or Borrelia Mei, which causes a Lyme like illness. So a whole bunch BLI Borreliosis.
[00:13:54] Wow, these must be all named after people that discovered these fun little pathogens. So the deer tick virus, the PWAs virus. and Bartonella. According to the Lyme Disease Organization these ticks have expanded their territory. They're now found throughout the eastern United States, north and central U. S. and the south. And they're spreading in all directions, northeast and upper Midwest. It is important to note that adult ticks will search for a host anytime when temperatures are above freezing, including winter. They're very successful. They can be found on birds, large, small mammals, all life stages bite humans.
[00:14:46] Nymphs and adult females are most commonly found on people. They're found grass. brush, logs, pets. So they're the ones that are all over the place. And they're the ones that have been bringing Lyme disease.
[00:15:06] We have the brown dog tick. The brown dog tick is a reddish Brown. It looks like the American dog tick, except the American dog tick has this little ring on its back. All ticks have the. The same kind of setup as a spider. It's they're eight legged so You'll know a tick when you see it the most ticks have a seed like appearance with the legs unlike an arachnid a regular House spider and that's a little more segmented.
[00:15:42] The brown dog tick This tick transmits Rocky Mountain spotted fever Q fever, or Rickettsiosis, to humans. And they also carry dog diseases, specific for dogs. Dogs are usually the host for these guys. Found worldwide. Brown dog tick can survive and breed in nature, but they live around homes.
[00:16:07] Here you go, if you're in the city according to the Lyme disease, these ticks can spend their entire life cycle indoors. Not good. You gotta treat the house, the yard, you gotta sanitize pet beds the car, and they're like bed bugs. They're really hard to get rid of according to limedisease. org.
[00:16:32] Here's a tick I never heard of. a woodchuck tick, a groundhog tick. I've never seen this critter in my life, but the Powassan virus disease is what this guy carries eastern half of the United States, and it feeds on groundhogs, skunks, raccoons, foxes, weasels, domestic animals, squirrels, and occasionally humans.
[00:16:55] Here's a tick that's making its way up from the south. It's called the Lone Star tick. And it has a white dot, the lone star on its back. Okay. So it's not exactly Texan there you go. Throughout the Eastern United States, very prevalent in the South and they're aggressive biters, the greatest risk of being bitten from early spring through late fall.
[00:17:22] This is the one that it, it transmits a whole bunch. It, Panola mountain fever, Ehrlichiosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Tularemia, Heartland Virus, Bourbon Virus, Q Fever, Tick Paralysis everything's bad with this guy. But what's, the tick that you might have been hearing in the news where people get an allergic reaction eating red meat.
[00:17:48] Yeah, it's called Alpha Gal Allergy. It's being increasingly recognized as a health problem in this tick's geographic range. If you know somebody that's had an allergy to red meat, this is the tick that's been biting them. Don't be surprised if they're up here in the Midwest because the range is expanding.
[00:18:10] Pacific Coast tick. It's prevalent in the southwestern United States. Baja, Mexico into Oregon and you can find them in California Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Colorado tick fever, Pacific Coast tick fever, the same bacterium that causes tularemia And, interesting, the bite of this tick causes a wound commonly mistaken for other biting insects and spiders.
[00:18:38] Great. We are moving along, guys. These are all the hard bodied ticks. Like I said, they look like a seed. These are the ones that you come across pretty much in the Midwest. Let's go to one more of these little critters. The rocky mounted wood tick. These ticks are reddish brown. They look like American dog ticks.
[00:19:03] They are the carriers of Colorado tick fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever. According to the LymeDisease. org, Rocky Mountain wood tick saliva, contains a neurotoxin that can occasionally cause tick paralysis in humans and pets. And once you get rid of the tick, it takes 24 to 72 hours for that to dissipate.
[00:19:27] Makes sense. If you're going to feast on your host, you might as well not have them moving around, right? Where do you find these guys? Scrublands, lightly wooded trails open areas. Eastern Western distribution. They're pretty much synonymous with the American dog tick extended to Canada.
[00:19:53] In the U S though, their geographical distribution is generally restricted to higher elevations above 4, 000 feet active from January through November. And the midsummer, they dissipate a little bit. Adult woodticks can be found questing about knee high on tips of vegetation. They like to feed on medium to large animals.
[00:20:15] And here's a fun fact, they can survive up to 600 days without feeding. Okay. Let's keep moving. We got a couple more ticks left here. The soft tick really is the only one that really is highlighted here by limedisease. org. They're found throughout the western United States, including Texas.
[00:20:38] Coniferous forest. at elevations between 900 to 2000 meters above sea level. Interesting people are usually bitten as they sleep in rustic mountain cabins that have been previously infested with rodents. Great. Caves, cave explorers get bit by these guys. And to look at this thing, it looks like a raisin with legs.
[00:21:00] You'd look at it and say, ugh. And then finally, the western blacklegged tick. Soft body tick. It transmits Lyme disease. And a whole host of other stuff that I cannot even pronounce. Adult females, once again, thought to be the primary cause of illness. Most prevalent in California, And Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah.
[00:21:29] Lizards, squirrels, voles, coyote, deer, and migrating birds. While the majority of cases of Lyme disease are diagnosed in the northeast and midwest, Lyme endemic counties in California are larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware. In other words don't think you're out of the woods if you're living in California.
[00:21:52] There is a new species of tick that has now arrived in the United States. And it's the Asian longhorn tick, primarily found in cattle.
[00:22:03] This tick does give some diseases to humans. And guess what? It's spreading around. I think the farthest north that's been found now is in Missouri. Which means it'll get into Iowa and into the Midwest pretty soon. So add that to your tick menagerie.
[00:22:23] Those are the main pathogen caring types of ticks. I highly recommend LymeDisease. org to go, or the CDC, which also talks about these same ticks. Trying to see if there's any other ones we covered the Gulf Coast tick. Soft tick and the western blacklegged tick. The CDC on ticks gives you a good guide to see how big these things look compared to a dime.
[00:22:58] The blacklegged, the deer tick that's the primary tick that you see when you're out in the woods. They're not that big guys. It's basically about just the letter N and E on one of one dime.
[00:23:17] That's about the size these guys get. So that is a problem, right? We're going to take a little break and we'll be back with how to treat or prevent ticks and what's being done to fight them. All right. You're listening to Strung Out.
[00:23:46] We're back and we're continuing our talk about ticks. The chance of you getting a tick is really based on prevention. You're a person that's going out into the woods, have a hike, you want to walk in a field, There's some commonsensical things to do.
[00:24:08] One of the first things, and if you grew up on a farm they tell you this right away as a kid, you take your socks and you put them on the outside of your pants. You tuck your pants into your socks. And what does this do? Keeps the pests from climbing into your pants.
[00:24:27] You also wear light colored clothing, and it's not because ticks go for dark colored objects, it's just so you can see the critters that much faster. If you're going to spend any extended time in the woods, in spring or summer, Prepare for a tick like you would for mosquitoes.
[00:24:46] You can either use DEET, there's insect repellent, OFF, and make sure that it is the kind of OFF for ticks. and mosquitoes. Very smart to apply this to your body. And make sure that especially in the springtime, if you can deal with wearing long sleeves, please do it because they're, the ticks just, you will not feel them crawling on you.
[00:25:17] Should you wear a hat? By all means, wear a hat, though it's a folk tale that ticks hide up in high trees and pounce on people and passing animals. What they do is, like I said earlier in this podcast, they stretch out those legs and they, like a piece of Velcro they cling to you. If you get a tick on your body, you have to take ticks off using a tweezer especially if it's embedded in you. And there's a lot of other stuff you can do, but the idea of taking a match head to a tick probably the smartest thing, okay?
[00:26:02] And you take the tick with a tweezer and you pull upward so you don't keep any part of that tick in your body, and then you have to apply alcohol or iodine and monitor it. Monitor it. If redness persists, if a ring appears, that sort of thing, get yourself to a doctor right away because there's a chance that you might have been infected with one of these diseases.
[00:26:33] Common sensical things if you live in rural areas is you keep everything mowed down as much as possible. So your yard if you have woods near you, you got to make sure that you at least keep a little bit of distance there.
[00:26:52] And a pathway or something like that you want to have that woods walk. Highly recommended that you stick to a mown path or mow yourself a path. Do that sort of thing. Again ticks they hang on grass, primarily tall grass, and they'll attach themselves to you that way.
[00:27:15] If you're bushwhacking across a field at the very least what you need to do. Tuck your pants legs into your socks. You have to inspect your clothing at the end of your escapades. You have to be very careful. clothing. One thing that's recommended is when you take off your clothing at night make sure that it is disposed of in a place that's not going to contaminate any other clothing.
[00:27:46] So don't throw it in a heap on the floor because the ticks can hang around. As I said earlier in the podcast, one of these suckers can live for 600 days without eating. Yikes. That's it. The basics with you, animals, dogs, cats there's a lot of tick control products, okay there's the collars, that sort of thing there's certain kinds of tick medicine that you can put directly onto the fur of the animal that'll keep ticks away.
[00:28:24] Don't take it for granted if you're living in the suburbs or in the city that you are not going to encounter ticks. You will. And and now with the climate warming up ticks can live a lot longer. They get active once it gets above freezing. So nobody's really safe from it. And why is it so important?
[00:28:46] Because now they're more active they're biting more and more people, these diseases are being carried around. So is there any hope? Yeah, and this is what got me talking about tick treatment is that there's a chewable tick tablet.
[00:29:05] A company called Tarsus Pharmaceuticals has a simple chewable tablet that can prevent Lyme disease. This innovative solution, and I'm reading from Tech Times here, offers long lasting protection against the disease and other tick related illnesses. Okay, so it's addressing the growing concern of Lyme disease.
[00:29:28] A staggering number, 476, 000 people are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year. CDC, Yale University says that the treatment alone, is nearly a hundred billion dollars in costs by Lyme disease. So pharmaceuticals are stepping up because obviously because this is going to be a bigger deal, it's going to be a way of making money. So it was originally developed for veterinary for animals.
[00:30:03] Lyme disease, what does it feel like? Fever, headache, fatigue, skin rash, looks like a bullseye. Lyme disease can last with you for a very long time. All right. So The best thing is that humans are coming up with this pill. The drug paralyzes and kills parasites by interfering with the way that signals are passed between their nerve cells. How interesting is that, huh? Will this be able to be used on wild animals? I don't know. Positive news. It sounds like this is something that is on the cusp of coming out. It's been tested in animals. And they're trying it in humans.
[00:30:46] If you know of anybody that's had Lyme disease that it's not a fun thing to have. This new drug coming out will be a game changer if it's out there and we're all able to take it. It sounds like it's a prevention type of of medication rather than an after the bite kind of medicine.
[00:31:12] You would take this prior to going out and heading into tick territory. Let's hope that works and that's it for this week of Strung Out. My resources here the CDC, Mayo Clinic, LymeDisease. org, Wired Magazine, and Tech Times if you just Google search that'll bring up the information and there's a lot of information out there.
[00:31:41] Even an article from Men's Journal that says human sweat contains a protein that suppresses the growth of a bacterium that causes Lyme disease. What do you know? So if you sweat a lot, maybe you're in luck. I'm not sure. Until next week. Take care of yourself.
