Tick ID?

[J_06]

Anyone recognize this thing? Wear shorts, sandals and all that all summer in the bush/fields and never had a tick or seen on one anyone else around here for that matter, found a few around my green house in PG. Is it a disease carrying species? Is it just a butt ugly funky spider?http://i65.tinypic.com/69n9qf.jpg

[albravo2]

Can't quite tell. Looks like a tick but the back shell part looks hard and ticks are soft.

Not a spider unless it grows a few legs.

[LupieHunter]

Ticks are carriers of Lyme disease and can pass it on when they bite you. Lyme disease is no joke and it's a very serious and hard to diagnose disease.

[caddisguy]

Anyone recognize this thing? Wear shorts, sandals and all that all summer in the bush/fields and never had a tick or seen on one anyone else around here for that matter, found a few around my green house in PG. Is it a disease carrying species? Is it just a butt ugly funky spider?

Hmm it does look like a tick. Maybe an adult wood tick that was previously engorged? It does not look like a black-legged / deer tick that would carry lyme disease. Interesting you have them around at that stage. Many animals around there? A tick lays thousands of eggs, but they don't get to look like that unless they have been biting on something.

And lucky you have never had a tick. I had well over a dozen this year but only two dug in. My brother got nailed really good too. Never seen a tick stuck that good and it didn't come out clean. Left a decent hole in his arm too :( All black-legged ticks, the lyme carriers... (10-20% of them?)

[J_06]

Nasty little things! Yeah I have a dog and live in a heavily forested area with critters always in the yard, hopefully was nibbling on a bunny and not the dog or the kid. Anything you guys do for your pets or kids? My dogs have always lived and played in the bush and I've never noticed them on them either. I was always told the ones this far north weren't Lyme carriers but after finding a 5"~ leopard slug last summer all bets are off what kinda creepy crawlers are around, need to move further north haha.

[J_06]

Can't quite tell. Looks like a tick but the back shell part looks hard and ticks are soft.

Not a spider unless it grows a few legs.
Pretty sure he had 8, there under his butt, I think the back right leg is juusst barely visible. I only can tell by the pic too, didn't look too long before a well placed 2x4 hit finished him off. I though the lack of an abdomen was the giveaway?

[ruger#1]

A tick is part of the spider family. Use this for your dog. They eat it. It lasts on month. Nexgard {afoxolaner} It kills fleas within 30 minutes. Works on ticks. Not sure how fast. For yourself and the kids. You need to use mosquito repellent with at least 40% DEET.

[barry1974w]

Didn't big brother limit deet to 30% fifteen years or so back?

[ruger#1]

Are you talking U.S. or Canada? 40% is recommended. I have some Muskol here that is 40%

[ACE]

Wood tick .... partially engorged.
Have removed a bucket of them over the years ..... myself, pets, and girlfriend.

[358mag]

Can't quite tell. Looks like a tick but the back shell part looks hard and ticks are soft.

Not a spider unless it grows a few legs.
Ticks are soft ??? well in Region 8 the ticks shell hard as a rock all most impossible to kill them unless have big rock or Leatherman type pliers . Good luck trying to do it with your fingers .

[Busterbrown]

Wood tick...looks like it is well fed!!!

[Jagermeister]

Looks like the kind of tick you would find on a moose

[boxhitch]

Are you talking U.S. or Canada? 40% is recommended. I have some Muskol here that is 40%Big Brother does sound like US , Old Granny is more Canadian
95% is still available south of 49. Not here, in case a mother-to-be guzzles a liter or two.

[ruger#1]

"Don't hit opossums if they've playing dead in the road," said Richard Ostfeld, of the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y.

Ostfeld is forest ecologist and an expert on the environmental elements of infectious diseases like Lyme disease.

Several years ago, scientists decided to learn about the part different mammals play in the spread of the ticks and the disease.

They tested six species -- white-footed mice, chipmunks, squirrels, opossums and veerys and catbirds -- by capturing and caging them, and then exposing each test subject to 100 ticks.

What they found, is that of the six, the opossums were remarkably good at getting rid of the ticks -- much more so that any of the others.

"I had no suspicion they'd be such efficient tick-killing animals," Ostfeld said.

Indeed, among other opossum traits, there is this: They groom themselves fastidiously, like cats. If they find a tick, they lick it off and swallow it. (The research team on the project went through droppings to find this out. All praise to those who study possum poop.)

Extrapolating from their findings, Ostfeld said, the team estimated that in one season, an opossum can kill about 5,000 ticks.

What ecologists are learning is how complex the interaction of ticks and mammals can be.

For example, foxes probably serve as a host for ticks seeking a blood meal. But foxes are great at killing white-footed mice -- the species in the environment credited with being the chief reservoir of the Lyme bacteria.

Likewise, Ostfeld said, opossums, waddling around at night, pick up lots of ticks. Some ticks end up getting their blood meal from the possum. But more than 90 percent of them ended up being groomed away and swallowed.

"They're net destroyers of ticks," Ostfeld said.

For Simon, of the U.S. Humane Society, the Cary Institute research is a welcome justification to just leave opossums be.

"People are so hard on them," she said.

That's in part because people think oppossums might be rabid when they drool and hiss and carry on when threatened. In fact, opossums are resistant to rabies.

Meanwhile, they are not particularly pretty. People who "ooh" and "aah" over fawns and bluebirds may not extend the same love to pokey animals with triangular heads, white faces and naked tails.

"I tell people 'We can't all be beautiful,' " Simon said.

[caddisguy]

Nasty little things! Yeah I have a dog and live in a heavily forested area with critters always in the yard, hopefully was nibbling on a bunny and not the dog or the kid. Anything you guys do for your pets or kids? My dogs have always lived and played in the bush and I've never noticed them on them either. I was always told the ones this far north weren't Lyme carriers but after finding a 5"~ leopard slug last summer all bets are off what kinda creepy crawlers are around, need to move further north haha.

I believe you only need to worry about black-legged / deer ticks in regards to lyme. That tick is definitely not a black-legged tick but probably a wood tick.

If you google deer ticks a look at some pics, you will be able to identify the lyme carriers easily. The nymph stage and adult males are pure black. The adult females have a red/orange abdomen. Deer ticks are the ones you need to watch out for in regards to lyme (others can still carry some nasty stuff like rocky mountain fever) ... I believe 10-20% of deer ticks carry lyme and infect hosts with lyme roughly 3-5% of the time. The longer a tick is in or more poorly it is removed removed, the greater the odds are of lyme infection. A bullseye rash will occur upon lyme infection about 50% of the time.

Always remove with tweezers and dig out the head if you have to. Scrub the crap out of the area with alcohol and/or peroxide afterwards. Consider taking deer ticks in for testing if they are attached longer than 36 hours or dont come out cleanly. I believe you can buy home test kits to test ticks now too. Never bothered testing personally. I have never had one attached for more than 36 hours that I know of and I have never had one come out in pieces. I have had about 20 of those devilish things dug in and sucking on me in the last couple years though.

Remove them with heat/vaseline/alcohol/etc if you really want to catch lyme.

[Canuck2]

Certainly a tick and partially engorged. Seems like it's of genus Dermacentor (good write-up in Wikipedia) and they can transmit Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tick paralysis, and several other unpleasant afflictions.

[wideopenthrottle]

Didn't big brother limit deet to 30% fifteen years or so back?

yep... http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/health-canada-to-ban-bug-repellents-with-high-concentrations-of-deet-1.320939
http://healthycanadians.gc.ca/product-safety-securite-produits/pest-control-products-produits-antiparasitaires/pesticides/about-au-sujet/insect_repellents-insectifuges-eng.php