Ticks belong to the class Arachnids, to the subclass Arthropods, scientists have more than 48 thousand of their species. But only some species are parasites that carry various diseases of humans and animals. Most of them eat organic food. Like earthworms, ticks play an important role in the formation of soil humus. Some types of ticks harm agriculture, eating the juice of cultivated plants. Among some species of these arthropods, there is such a thing as omovampirism, when a hungry individual eats its brother's drunk blood.
The size of ticks is very small - from 0.2 mm to 5 mm, while the dimensions of the female are slightly larger than the sizes of
males. Females of only some species can reach 3 cm in length. The study of ticks is a section of zoology called acarology.
Of the variety of species in a person’s home, one can find gamasid ticks, saprophytes (house dust mites) and ixodid ticks.
Gamasid ticks that feed on the blood of mammals can penetrate into living quarters with rodents (rats and mice) and usually live in places of communication (in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the toilet), under baseboards, behind furniture.
It is almost impossible to see small-sized house dust mites with the naked eye. In human dwellings, they are most often found in pile of carpet on the floor, as well as in furniture upholstery, in soft toys, on clothes, in bedding - pillows, mattresses, blankets. The food for them is exfoliated particles of human skin.
Ixodid ticks can get into housing by attaching themselves to human clothing or animal hair, as well as things, firewood, bouquets of flowers, etc. The food for them is the blood and lymph of mammals, while the saturation process can last up to three weeks.
Ticks attack their prey during the warm season - from April to October, the most activity occurs in late spring - early summer. It is worth noting that the number of ticks that can infect a person with any disease, including tick-borne encephalitis, Crimean hemorrhagic fever or Lyme disease, is only 1%, i.e. 99% of ticks are not dangerous to humans.
Ticks do not jump on their prey, they wait for it on the ground or in the grass. Once on the body, the tick does not immediately attach to the skin - several hours may pass before this point, which means that if you have small ticks in time to notice, then the bite can be avoided.
Having spotted, the tick bites through the skin and inserts into the wound a special pharyngeal outgrowth (hypostome) covered with chitinous teeth, which looks like a harpoon. That is why a tick, the size of which increases as it is filled with blood, is difficult to extract. This is usually done with tweezers. After removing the tick, the wound is treated with iodine solution or alcohol. Dressing is optional. Whether a person has been bitten by an encephalitis tick whose size and appearance does not differ from non-encephalitis can be determined only in laboratory conditions, and therefore it is necessary to contact a medical institution as soon as possible.
To protect yourself from ticks, it is necessary to take special protective measures before going to the forest - put on clothes with long sleeves, put trousers in socks, wear a headdress and, if possible, use repellents that repel mites, which are applied to exposed areas of the body and clothes . If you plan to visit often places where attacks of these arthropods are possible, it is best to get a tick-borne encephalitis vaccine. Returning home, you should especially carefully examine yourself and your pet for pests, since the size of ticks that have not yet sucked onto the skin does not immediately detect them.
Compliance with these basic safety measures can save not only health, but also, possibly, life.