Kangaroo tick
The kangaroo tick is a small hard tick from Australia. Like all ticks, it has eight legs and is a cousin of the spiders. It lives only on blood, and it gets its name from the kangaroos and wallabies it likes to feed on.
Ticks: how to stay safe
- In Estonia, the castor bean tick and the taiga tick can carry Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis.
- Ticks wait on grass stems, from ankle to knee height. Long trousers tucked into socks and light clothes help you spot them.
- After playing outside, check your body, your hair and your pets for ticks.
- Found a tick? A grown-up should take it out quickly with fine tweezers or a tick tool: hold it close to the skin and pull slowly. No oil or alcohol on it. Then wash the spot.
- There is a vaccine against tick-borne encephalitis, for children too from one year old. Ask your doctor.
- If in the weeks after a bite you get a fever, feel ill or see a red patch that grows, go to a doctor.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It needs a blood meal at each stage of its life: as a larva, as a nymph and as a grown-up.
Between meals it drops off its host and moults, which means it grows a new, bigger skin.
Grown-up males usually skip their blood meal and go looking for a mate instead.
It is a hard tick, so its back is covered by a tough shield.
There are four kinds of kangaroo tick, and some may turn out to be separate species.
Most asked questions about Kangaroo tick
?What does the kangaroo tick eat?
Only blood, mostly from kangaroos and wallabies, but also from other animals and people.
?Where does the kangaroo tick live?
In Australia, in Western Australia, parts of Queensland and New South Wales.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Amblyomma triguttatum
- Group
- Scorpions, ticks and friends
- Family
- Ixodidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Ixodida > Ixodidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Ornate kangaroo tick
Where the facts come from
- Amblyomma triguttatum (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Caroline Harding, Museum Victoria. CC BY 3.0 au, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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