Every year, the distribution area of ticks increases, they become more and more. Along with them, the number of deadly diseases carried by animals and humans by these dangerous predators is growing.
Today it is easy to pick a tick in a city square or in a park, on a personal plot and in the garden. Creatures in chitinous shells are clutching the ring around a person more and more.
You can find out what the tick eats and its habits by reading this article.
About types of ticks
All ticks belong to the order of small arachnids, uniting about 20 thousand species. What does a tick eat, except for blood? Some of the ticks listed below feed on other types of feed.
The largest group of soil mites are shell mites. They live in forest soils and litter. Chew rotting plant debris with copious microflora with their gnawing chelicera. They carry tape helminths affecting livestock.
Small insects that gnaw at their chelicera are barn mites (or bread and flour). They live in rotting plant debris and in the soil. In storages of agricultural products, they cause damage to flour, grain and cereals. In people working in such facilities, they can cause severe skin irritation in the form of an allergic reaction. The tick feeds on insect tissues.
The best studied chicken mite, which is a serious pest of poultry farms. What does a chicken tick eat? They are active at night when they come out of the slots of the chicken coop and, attacking chickens, suck their blood. It also happens that with a massive lesion, birds die from anemia.
On mammals, scabies mites (scabies itch) parasitize, causing scabies in humans. The female insect gnaws long passages in the skin and lays eggs there, which leads to inflammation and severe itching.
What does a gamaz tick eat ? Most of the representatives of this group are predators that feed on small invertebrates, and many are parasites and vertebrates.
Water mites are quite common in fresh water bodies, but mainly live in the seas. These free-living predators attack small invertebrates, but among them there are parasites of various animals.
The most common and dangerous ixodid ticks in Russia are blood-sucking parasites. They attack a variety of terrestrial vertebrates (birds, mammals and reptiles). In the detachment, these are the largest representatives, reaching up to 2.5 cm in length after filling the body with blood. In the normal state, they have a size of 1.3 cm. These are carriers of many diseases, among which are dangerous.
To learn more about what ticks eat in nature, we will introduce you to the most dangerous ticks for people.
Encephalitis Mites
Below are the most aggressive ticks.
Encephalitis tick is one of the most common and famous. It is important to note that the encephalitis tick is not a separate breed (species) of arthropod insects. Encephalitis can be infected by any species of ticks, so it is impossible to distinguish signs that determine the degree of danger. But it should be remembered that such an infection can lead to death of a person.
By the appearance of the insect it is impossible to determine whether it is encephalitic or not, therefore, when going to the forest, necessary measures should be taken to protect against contact with predators.
It is the ixodic ticks that more often than others act as carriers of dangerous encephalitis. They have a second name - hard ticks. By this name they owe a solid chitinous coating, which is a kind of protective carapace. Ixodidae include both dog and taiga ticks.
Forest tick habits
What do ticks eat in the forest? The blood of different animals and humans.
They belong to the family of arachnids, but, unlike spiders, do not weave a web and have shorter legs. These parasites are a real problem for lovers of walks and trips to wooded areas. Recently, ticks are found in the steppes and in the fields. On them you can stumble on stones and sand. To a greater extent, parasites are attracted by shaded, moist areas in the forest.
As a rule, ticks rarely rise above a meter from the ground, and when attacking a victim, they try to move higher to the softest areas of the skin. Female ticks are more voracious, they can suck blood without stopping for 6 days, while males also need 3 days to saturate.
Forest ticks are relatively small, their size in the state of hunger does not exceed 4 mm in length. When blood is sucked in large volumes, sizes can increase up to 120 times.
The tick bite is not felt, because the insect introduces a special saliva that blocks pain in humans. In this regard, the tick can imperceptibly feed on blood for a long time.
Fine sense of smell helps the tick to detect the victim. In order for a predator to climb onto a person, the last one is enough to stop in the forest even for a couple of minutes.
About tick-borne diseases
Knowing what the tick eats, it should be remembered that this predatory insect is a carrier of various diseases.
In fact, there are many ixodid ticks , but basically two species have real dangerous epidemiological significance: Persulcatus (or the taiga tick), which lives in the European and Asian parts of Russia; Ixodes Ricinus (or European forest tick) - in the European part.
Ticks can be carriers of the following diseases:
- encephalitis;
- tick-borne typhus;
- Lyme disease (or borreliosis);
- hemorrhagic fever;
- spotted fever;
- Marseille fever;
- babesiosis;
- tularemia;
- ehrlichiosis.
Many of these diseases are dangerous and not very treatable, and some show signs only 10-20 days after the bite.
Important information
After it has become known what the forest tick feeds on and what this can lead to, one should know how to protect oneself from predatory insects, and what to do if the tick has sucked. Be sure to remember that the part that sticks into the skin (proboscis) is equipped with small "thorns". They are directed to the back of the tick.
Therefore, if it is pulled along the axis, the “spines” bristle and bite even more firmly into the skin, which can lead to the separation of its proboscis from the tick’s body, which can forever remain in the dermis.
To avoid this, the insect should be removed in a circular motion (unscrew), and not just stretched. In this case, the thorns on the proboscis will be folded to the axis of rotation, while the head does not come off.
If this could not be done correctly, the place of suction (where the head remained) should be wiped with cotton wool moistened with alcohol, and then the head should be removed with a sterile needle like a regular splinter.
Conclusion
Ticks are creatures that, if necessary, can last a long time in nature (even for months), and in laboratories and for years, do without food.
This is due to their immobility and, in connection with this, rather economical expenditure of energy reserves of the body.