Rabbit tick
The rabbit tick is a tiny tick from America that drinks the blood of rabbits and hares. It is only about as big as a pinhead. It is very picky and almost never chooses people.
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 big is it?
How long is it?
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Fun facts
It lives in more places than almost any other American tick, all the way from Alaska to Argentina.
It climbs up a plant to about the height of a rabbit, stretches out its front legs and waits very still.
It has no eyes. It finds an animal by sensing its warm body and the air it breathes out.
On a rabbit it likes to sit on the ears, between them or on the neck.
It drinks blood once at every stage of its life, then drops to the ground to change its skin.
Most asked questions about Rabbit tick
?Does the rabbit tick bite people?
Very rarely. It much prefers rabbits, hares and ground birds.
?What does the rabbit tick eat?
It drinks blood, mostly from rabbits and hares.
?How big is a rabbit tick?
Tiny, only about 1 mm long when grown up.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Haemaphysalis leporispalustris
- Group
- Scorpions, ticks and friends
- Family
- Ixodidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Ixodida > Ixodidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
- Also known as
- Grouse tick
Where the facts come from
- Haemaphysalis leporispalustris (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 Robert Evans Snodgrass (1875-1962). Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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