Questing hard ticks always climb upward when they catch a host. After they latch onto a pant leg they crawl steadily up until they reach skin, often settling in the armpit, groin, scalp line, or behind the knee - warm, thin-skinned, hard-to-see places. Tucking pants into socks forces the tick onto visible outer fabric.
Hard ticks find hosts by questing: climbing onto grass blades or low vegetation, anchoring with the back legs, and waving the front legs…
Folk wisdom holds that ticks fall out of trees onto people - this is wrong. Ticks cannot jump, fly, or drop from height; they quest on…
Within 5 to 30 minutes of biting, a hard tick begins secreting a glycine-rich saliva that hardens around its mouthparts into a cement…
Ticks find hosts using Haller's organ, a sensory pit on the tarsus of each foreleg. It carries chemoreceptors tuned to ammonia, carbon…
Hard ticks (Ixodidae) take one large blood meal per life stage and stay attached for days. Soft ticks (Argasidae), including Ornithodoros,…
Wet ticks are surprisingly hard to kill in laundry - even hot wash cycles leave a fraction alive. Tumble drying clothes on high heat for…