What does a tick eat in nature?

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:53

Every year, the area of distribution of ticks increases, there are more and more of them. Together with them, the number of deadly diseases transmitted to animals and humans by these dangerous predators is growing.

Today it is easy to pick up a tick in a city square or in a park, in a personal plot and in a garden. Creatures in chitinous shells are increasingly squeezing the ring around a person.

You can learn about what the tick eats and its habits by reading this article.

About types of mites

All mites belong to the order of small arachnids, uniting about 20 thousand species. What does a tick eat besides blood? Some of the mites below also feed on other types of food.

The largest group of soil mites is armored mites. They live in forest soils and litter. They chew on rotting plant remains with abundant microflora with their gnawing chelicerae. They carry tapeworms that infect livestock.

Small insects that gnaw with their chelicerae are barn mites (or bread and flour mites). Dwell in decayingplant debris and soil. In storage of agricultural products, they cause spoilage of flour, grain and cereals. In people working in such premises, they can cause severe skin irritation in the form of an allergic reaction. The tick feeds on insect tissue.

The best studied chicken mite, which is a serious pest of poultry farms. What does chicken mite eat? They are active at night, when they come out of the crevices of the chicken coop and, attacking chickens, suck their blood. It also happens that with a mass defeat, birds die from anemia.

Mammals are parasitized by scabies mites (scabies itch), which cause scabies in humans as well. The female insect gnaws long passages in the skin and lays eggs there, which leads to inflammation and severe itching.

What does the gamasid mite eat? Most of the representatives of this group are predators, feeding on small invertebrates, and many are also parasites of vertebrates.

Water mites are quite common in fresh water, but mostly live in the seas. These free-living predators attack small invertebrates, but also parasitize a variety of animals.

The most common and dangerous ixodid ticks in Russia are blood-sucking parasites. They attack a wide 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 their normal state, they are 1.3 cm in size. They are carriers of many diseases,some of which are dangerous.

To learn more about what ticks eat in nature, let's get acquainted with the most dangerous ticks for humans.

Encephalitis mites

Below are the most aggressive ticks.

The encephalitis tick is one of the most common and well-known. It is important to note that the encephalitic tick is not a separate breed (species) of arthropod insects. Encephalitis can infect any variety of ticks, so it is impossible to identify the signs that determine the degree of danger. But it should be remembered that such an infection can lead to death.

It is impossible to determine by the appearance of an insect whether it is encephalitic or not, therefore, when going into the forest, you should take the necessary measures to protect yourself from contact with predators.

It is Ixodes ticks that most often act as carriers of dangerous encephalitis. They also have a second name - hard mites. They owe this name to a hard chitinous coating, which is a kind of protective shell. Ixodes include both dog and taiga ticks.

Tick habits

What do ticks eat in the forest? Blood of various animals and humans.

They belong to the arachnid family, but, unlike spiders, they do not spin webs and have shorter legs. These parasites are a real problem for lovers of walking and traveling through wooded areas. Recently, ticks are found both in the steppes and in the fields. On thethey can be found both on stones and on sand. To a greater extent, parasites are attracted to shaded, damp 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 for 6 days without stopping, while males need 3 days to saturate.

Forest ticks are relatively small, their size in a state of hunger in length does not exceed 4 mm. When sucking blood in large volumes, the size can increase up to 120 times.

The bite of a tick is not felt, because the insect injects a special saliva that blocks pain in humans. In this regard, the tick can quietly feed on blood for a long time.

An excellent sense of smell helps the tick to detect the victim. In order for a predator to climb onto a person, it is enough for the latter 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 2 species mainly have a real dangerous epidemiological significance: Persulcatus (or taiga tick), living in the European and Asian parts of Russia; Ixodes Ricinus (or European forest tick) - in the European part.

Ticks can carry the following diseases:

encephalitis;
Tick-borne typhus;
Lyme disease (orborreliosis);
hemorrhagic fever;
spotted fever;
Marseilles fever;
babesiosis;
tularemia;
erlichiosis.

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 became known what the forest tick eats and what it can lead to, you should know how to protect yourself from predatory insects, and what to do if the tick nevertheless sticks. Be sure to remember that the part that sticks into the skin (proboscis) is equipped with small "thorns". They are directed towards the back of the tick.

Therefore, if it is pulled along the axis, the "thorns" bristle and dig even harder into the skin, which can lead to separation of its proboscis from the body of the tick, which can forever remain in the dermis.

To avoid this, the insect should be removed in a circular motion (unscrewed), and not just pulled out. In this case, the spikes on the proboscis will curl up to the axis of rotation, while the head will not come off.

If this could not be done correctly, the suction site (where the head remained) should be wiped with cotton wool moistened with alcohol, after which the head should be removed with a sterile needle like a normal splinter.