Blyborough tick
Carios vespertilionis
The Blyborough tick is a soft tick that lives with bats. It mostly drinks the blood of small bats called pipistrelles. Like all ticks, it has eight legs and is a cousin of spiders.
Fun fact: this one is not an insect. It is an arachnid with eight legs, a cousin of the spiders.
Lives in
Europe, Africa and Asia, wherever bats roost
Can it hurt you?
Dangerous: look, do not touch
This tick can bite people and pets, and it can carry germs that make people sick. Look, do not touch, and tell a grown-up if you find one.
What does it eat?
It drinks blood, mostly from bats.
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?
Blyborough tick about 0.02 km/h (0.01 mph)
A garden snail about 0.05 km/h (0.03 mph)
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
It is also called the short-legged bat tick.
2
It lives in all kinds of bat roosts, even ones the bats only use for a short time.
3
It can carry several kinds of germs, so scientists in Sweden, Pakistan and Britain have studied it.
4
It is a soft tick, which means it has no hard shield on its back like the ticks you find in grass.
you asked
Most asked questions about Blyborough tick
?Where does the short-legged bat tick live?
In bat roosts across Europe, Africa and Asia.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Carios vespertilionis
- Group
- Scorpions, ticks and friends
- Family
- Argasidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Ixodida > Argasidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia
- Also known as
- Short-legged bat tick
Where the facts come from
- Carios vespertilionis (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 Gilles San Martin. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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