Deer tick
The deer tick is a tiny tick with dark legs that lives in the woods of eastern North America. It waits on plants and climbs onto animals and people to drink their blood. It has no eyes at all.
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
A baby tick has six legs, but when it grows up it has eight, like a spider.
A female holds on to an animal and drinks blood for four to five days.
It can still be busy after a frost, because a sunny day warms it up enough to hunt.
Its whole life takes about two years.
A female can lay from several hundred to a few thousand eggs.
Most asked questions about Deer tick
?How big is a deer tick?
Very small. An adult female is only about 3 to 4 millimetres long, and the young ones are even tinier.
?Why is it called a deer tick?
Because grown-up ticks often feed on white-tailed deer. Its other name is black-legged tick.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Ixodes scapularis
- Group
- Scorpions, ticks and friends
- Family
- Ixodidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Ixodida > Ixodidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Black-legged tick
Where the facts come from
- Ixodes scapularis (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 Photo by Scott Bauer.. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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