Photo of a dog tick

Differences between a dog tick and other representatives

Life cycle

The tick needs a portion of blood 1 time at each stage of development. Then there is either molting before the next stage, or (if we are talking about an adult female) the production of eggs.

Spreading

The main conditions for the survival of a dog tick are the presence of hosts and a humid microclimate.

Danger to people and control measures

Despite the name, it does not matter for the dog tick whose blood it feeds in order to get enough and continue its further development. In theory, a dog tick can bite any warm-blooded animal or human:

• The larvae are taken over plants and shrubs no higher than 50 cm, usually biting small rodents and birds.
• Nymphs climb plants up to 1 meter in height, bite medium-sized animals, people, but most often children (due to their short stature).
• Adult ticks easily move through tall shrubs and plants, bite large animals and humans.

Ticks are animals from the class of arachnids, which, due to their size and adaptive abilities, occupy ever large territories. He can hit a pet not only in the forest or in the country, but also during a regular walk in a city square or park. The big danger is that the tick carries harmful viruses, and they, in turn, penetrate the blood cells, leading to destruction.

An adult individual in his entire life will not overcome more than 10 m on his own. She often waits for her prey on the path or the side of the road.

Ticks do not jump from trees, as some believe, their appearance on the neck or head is due to the manner of crawling up the body.

Resting on the support with 4 hind legs, 2 front pairs of legs, on which the olfactory organs are located, stretch out to catch on to the victim. Then he slowly and persistently makes his way, chooses the site of the bite.

The tick is more likely to wait for the pet on the trail.

Ticks in animals can appear in other ways:

• get into the apartment through a person's outerwear, shoes, accessories;
• by contact with affected pets at home.

Their size is on average 2 mm, they are considered the largest, after being saturated with blood, they increase to 1.3 cm.

Increases in size up to 2.5 cm have also been recorded.

Anxiety symptoms

The tick bite itself is painless, only sensitive animals immediately express concern. The most dangerous thing is that, having settled on animals in the subcutaneous zone, for a long time no signs of a bite appear.

Weak animals are most often at risk of infection.

All animals fall into the risk zone, but are more susceptible to:

• with weakened immunity;
• old age;
• with digestive problems;
• with untreated skin diseases or injured.

• lethargic behavior, refusal to play;
• lack of appetite;
• scratching parts of the body to blood, the animal feels a terrible itching;
• affected areas of hair that climbs in tufts;
• initially, the area of ​​the head near the ears, forehead, eyes becomes bald;
• in a severe form, the hair is absent on the paws, on the sides and tail;
• the appearance of rashes in the form of bubbles, tubercles;
• extensive peeling of the skin.

Ixodid ticks carry the dreaded encephalitis virus that damages nerve tissue and the brain.

Then there is an increase in signs of intoxication:

• temperature rise up to 42 ˚С;
• discoloration of urine, it turns brown or dark green;
• reflexes are dulled;
• vomiting appears, diarrhea with blood;
• painful reactions to stroking, changes in body position;
• the pet makes plaintive sounds.

Prevention of a tick bite

A dry pine forest with sandy soil, no vegetation on the ground - an unattractive habitat for ticks.

Morning and evening hours are the time of their activity. But periodic prophylaxis for a pet should be carried out regardless of weather conditions or seasonality.

The collar will help you avoid picking up a tick while walking

There are 2 main groups of means of protection against blood-sucking arachnids:

Types of insecticidal acaricidal agents:

Prevention will not be superfluous when using shampoos with permethrin. When several pets live in the house, you cannot purchase the same means of protection for them. The same permethrin is dangerous for cats, so you need to make sure that they do not come into contact with the treated pet, or buy a collar with this substance, not drops.

Treatment with folk remedies

But if preventive measures did not help, and the animal fell ill, then you can turn to traditional medicine:

1. Kerosene, which is applied to the affected areas. It cannot be washed off for several hours, you need to make sure that the animal does not lick the substance.
2. A decoction of calendula has an antiseptic effect. To do this, wipe the damaged areas with a cotton swab soaked in broth.
3. Chamomile decoction is an affordable drug that is also used to wipe the animal, the main thing is to avoid getting it into the ears.

It should be remembered that if alarming symptoms appear, it is better to immediately contact your veterinarian. The task of a specialist is to make the correct diagnosis, to identify the type of tick and the disease caused by it.

Use kerosene carefully to get rid of the tick so that liquid does not get into the animal's eyes and ears

Argasidae - Argasidae

Subcutaneous mite (hair) - Demodex

This mite lives on the human body, namely on the face. The body is 0.4-0.5 mm long, the body is oblong, has a light yellow color. The subcutaneous mite lives in the sebaceous glands, skin pores, eyelid glands and hair follicles on the head. Feeding under the skin, the hair mite releases toxic substances that cause an allergic reaction: itching, redness, rash. Subcutaneous mites on the face of people cannot be seen with the naked eye, but only under a microscope. The mite lays eggs in the skin, develops and leaves behind excrement and passages, which leads to the above diseases.

Tracheal mite - Sternostomatracheacolum

Dust mites - Dermatophagoidesfarinae

Body size 0.1-0.5 mm. Dust mites are saprophytic mites, that is, they feed on processed waste products of humans, animals and plants. This is a household mite that lives in pillows, mattresses, linen, and house dust. It is also often called farina, sofa or paper mite. Household mites can cause an allergic reaction, asthma. Thermal treatment of linen, pillows and regular wet cleaning in the house is necessary.

Chicken mite - Dermanyssusgallinae

Chicken mite

Feather mites are microscopic - 0.5 mm. Down and feather pillows are the ideal habitat for them. Feather mite is dangerous to humans because it causes allergic reactions, urticaria, bronchial asthma, swelling of the respiratory tract and dermatitis. House mites irritate the epidermis of our skin. You can get rid of them by treating the pillows with steam or washing in hot water. And it is best to purchase pillows made of unnatural filler.

Elk mite - Lipopténacérvi

Soil mite (root)

The soil mite has an oval light body (0.5-1 mm). The root mite lives in the soil, gnawing into the roots and root crops, and thereby harm agriculture. Damaged roots become rotten and often rot. Infection of crops with soil mites can also occur during storage. In the fight against soil mites, acaricides (anti-mite drugs) will help you.

Flour (mealy) or barn mite

Mealy mite is microscopic, with a body length of 0.32-0.67 mm. The flour mite feeds on cereals, flour, meat products, dried fruits. Barn mite is a pest of storage products in the house. The grain that has been damaged by the flour mite is not suitable for human consumption. The flour mite carries E. coli and various bacteria. Their skin causes allergies and dermatoses, especially in children. The flour mite also contributes to gastrointestinal disease, shortness of breath, anaphylaxis, and kidney disease. The flour mite does not tolerate low temperatures. For fumigation of large rooms, it is advised to use the acaricides Fostoksin, Fostek.

Oribatida

The armored mite has a dark brown body color (0.7-0.9 mm). It is not harmful to humans and agriculture. On the contrary, it helps regulate the decomposition of organic matter and microorganisms that live in the soil, making the soil loose and favorable for plant growth. The armored mite feeds on plant and animal decaying debris.

Rat mite - Ornithonyssusbacoti

The rat mite attacks mainly rats, but it can also drink the blood of other rodents. Body 0.75 to 1.44 mm gray or black. The rat mite can also attack other mammals, including humans. The rat mite leaves redness, itching, swelling, and rash on the human body. The rat mite is dangerous because it carries dangerous diseases such as rat tick-borne dermatitis, tularemia, typhus, and fever. The rat can easily transmit these diseases to humans.

Cecidophyopsis ribis

White currant mite, worm-like (0.2 mm). The kidney mite is a pest of currants and gooseberries. A bud mite on currants feeds on plant juices. It gets on plants with the help of insects, birds, wind. A kidney mite, hibernating in the buds of currants, damages them, which leads to deformation and death of the buds. A kidney mite on currants can settle in 8 individuals per kidney. To combat it, they use acaricides and follow the rules of agricultural technology. A bud mite on currants gives five generations per year.

Gall mite - Eriophyoidea

The gall mite has a worm-like body (0.1-0.3 mm). It inhabits both cultivated and wild trees, bushes, shrubs. The gall mite sucks the juices from the leaves of plants, as a result of which photosynthesis and water balance are disrupted, which ultimately leads to deformation and drying of the leaves. Also, small shoots appear on the leaves - galls, in which the gall mite hides and lays eggs. It is necessary to spray the plants with acaricides and insecticides, adhere to the rules of agricultural technology, and thus the gall mite will no longer harm your plants.

Strawberry mite - Phytonemuspallidus

The body is oval, translucent, pale yellow (0.1-0.2 mm). The strawberry mite feeds on leaf juices and is located on the underside of the leaf plate. The strawberry mite attacks the plant during the release of the antennae. The harm that the strawberry mite bears on strawberries is wilting, drying and dying off of leaves. For a year, a strawberry mite gives about 7 generations. So the scale of its settlement is quite large.

Spider mite - Tetranychinae

The body is oval (0.4-0.6 mm). Body color depends on the way the tick lives. For example, a spider mite on red cucumbers. This red mite settles on the underside of the leaf and sucks the juices out of the plant. The red tick on cucumbers settles in large colonies, which leads to the early death of the plant. Also, a red tick on flowers is no less damaging. It is also called a flower mite. He gladly populates indoor plants. For example, a red mite on an orchid reproduces very actively, especially at warm temperatures. The spider mite settles on violets no less than on other flowers. A pubescent leaf is an ideal habitat for it. A spider mite leaves a thin cobweb on plants, only those species that have a spinning apparatus are capable of this. Their web does not carry special significance, this is only a characteristic feature that they inherited from their relatives of spiders.

Ixodid (forest / taiga) tick - Ixodidae

The body is flat, round or oval (1-10mm). It is a gray mite, sometimes light yellow to brown, or almost black mite. Taiga ticks are bloodsuckers by the nature of their diet. After feeding on blood, this forest mite turns gray or pinkish-yellowish. Stages of development of ixodid ticks: egg, larva, nymph and adult. Small animals are common victims of larvae and nymphs, but ticks are found in humans no less often. They are usually attached to the head or other hairy areas. The forest tick most often carries Lyme disease, that is, a lot of well-known encephalitis, piroplasmosis and others. It is distributed all over the world. These are the most dangerous ticks.

The tick (Acari) is one of the oldest inhabitants of our planet. Contrary to the erroneous opinion, ticks are not insects, but are representatives of the order of arachnids.

Description of ticks. What does a tick look like?

In size, these representatives of arthropods rarely reach 3 mm, in general, the size of ticks ranges from 0.1 to 0.5 mm. As befits arachnids, ticks lack wings. Adult ticks have 4 pairs of legs, while specimens that have not reached sexual maturity have three pairs of legs. Without eyes, ticks orient themselves in space with the help of a well-developed sensory apparatus, thanks to which they can smell the victim 10 meters away. According to the structure of the body, all types of ticks can be divided into leathery ones, with an accrete head and chest, and solid (armored), in which the head is attached to the body movably. Oxygen supply also depends on the structure of the body: the former breathe through the skin or trachea, while the armored ones have special spiracles.

What do ticks eat?

By the way of nutrition, ticks are divided into:

• saprophages feeding on organic residues

Predators of blood-sucking ticks wait for the prey, settling in ambush on blades of grass, twigs and sticks. With the help of paws equipped with claws and suction cups, they attach to it, after which they move to the place of feeding (groin, neck or head region, armpits). Moreover, the victim of a tick can be not only a person, but also other herbivorous ticks or thrips.

A tick bite can be very dangerous, as ticks are carriers of diseases, including encephalitis. Ticks can do without food for up to 3 years, but at the slightest opportunity they show miracles of gluttony and can increase in weight up to 120 times.

Types of ticks. Tick ​​classification

Ticks have more than 40,000 species, which scientists have divided into 2 main superorders:

Description of the main types of mites:

• Ixodidspincers

• Argasovye pincers

• Carapace mites

• Gamasid mite

• Subcutaneous mite

• Scabies mite

• Ear mite

• Dust mite (bed, linen)

It is absolutely harmless to birds, animals and humans, as it is a complete “vegetarian” and feeds on plant juices, settling from the lower part of the leaf and sucking the juices out of it. It is a carrier of gray rot harmful to plants.

• Water (sea) mite

It feeds on its congeners, therefore, sometimes a person deliberately settles in greenhouses and greenhouses to combat spider mites.

• Barn (flour, bread)mite

For humans, in principle, it is safe, but for grain or flour reserves it is a serious pest: products are clogged with waste products of flour mites, which leads to its rotting and the formation of mold.

lives in the southern part of Russia, in Kazakhstan, Transcaucasia, the mountains of Central Asia, in the south of Western Siberia. It mainly settles in forest-steppes or forests. Dangerous for animals and humans, can be a carrier of encephalitis, plague, brucellosis, fever.

harmless to humans, but dangerous to dogs. Dwells everywhere. It is especially active in coastal areas and on the Black Sea coast.

Where do ticks live?

Ticks are found in every climate zone and on every continent. Due to the fact that ticks prefer moist places, they choose forest ravines, undergrowth, thickets near the banks of streams, flooded meadows, overgrown paths, animal hair, dark storage rooms with agricultural products, as their habitat. Some species are adapted for life in the seas and reservoirs with fresh water. Some mites live in houses and apartments, for example house mites, dust mites, flour mites.

Spread of ticks

How long does a tick live?

The lifespan of a tick depends on the species. For example, house dust mites or dust mites live 65-80 days. Other species, such as the taiga tick, live up to 4 years. Ticks can live from 1 month to 3 years without food.

Reproduction of ticks. Stages (cycle) of tick development

Most ticks are oviparous, although there are viviparous species. Like all arachnids, ticks have a clear division into females and males. The most interesting life cycle is tracked in blood-sucking species. The following stages of tick development are distinguished:

• Larva
• Nymph
• Adult

Mite eggs

In late spring or early summer, the female tick, saturated with blood, makes a clutch of 2.5-3 thousand eggs. What do tick eggs look like? The egg is a rather large cell in relation to the size of the female, consisting of cytoplasm and nucleus, and covered with a two-layer membrane, which is painted in various colors. Tick ​​eggs can be of completely different shapes - from round or oval, to flattened and elongated.

What do tick eggs look like?

These bloodsuckers belong to the ixodid family, that is, ticks with hard integuments. It is the canine bloodsuckers that carry the largest number of infectious pathogens that pose a significant danger to both humans and animals.

External signs of dog ticks

Outwardly, dog ticks are similar to their ixodic "counterparts", but have a uniform brown-red coloration not only of the back, but also of the limbs.

• Females fundamentally differ from males not only in sex characteristics, but also in appearance. As it becomes saturated, the female canine bloodsucker changes color and becomes yellowish-gray.
• In males, a large area of ​​the back is covered with a hard chitinous shield extending over the abdomen, while in the female there is such a shield only in the region of the head.
• The rest of the soft body of the female is adapted to significant stretching when feeding on blood in order to accommodate its significant volumes.
• Saturated nymphs also have sexual characteristics, but the hard covers of future males appear only after molting and transition to adults.
• The larvae are small, reddish, when saturated, they darken significantly, changing color to a more saturated one.

The ability to stretch the body varies significantly at each stage of development. The larva is able to double the body when feeding, the nymph and the female - three times or more, the male - 1.5 times.

The period of activity of the dog tick

The general activity of dog ticks begins with the warming of the earth's surface up to 5 degrees, but the peaks for each of the stages of transformation are different.

While for adult bloodsuckers, the characteristic time of activity falls in the last months of spring and early autumn, larvae and nymphs, on the contrary, go hunting in the season that falls in mid-summer.

Given the theoretical possibility for a nymph to cling to a person, since she can climb up a plant to a meter height, it is not advisable to lose vigilance even in the hot summer months. It becomes a necessity to protect yourself, children and pets as carefully as in spring and autumn.

The distribution area of ​​dog ticks

The distribution zones of the dog tick in central Russia coincide with the taiga "brother", and around the world the dog bloodsucker is found much more widely - throughout the Northern Hemisphere of the planet.

It has another name - "European forest tick", although in Latin it is called the same - Ixodes ricinus.

This suggests that the dog tick is rampant with might and main where there is vegetation. In recent years, there has been a steady migration of the tick closer to the person and his economy.

The canine bloodsucker, which used to traditionally feed on the blood of forest and steppe inhabitants, such as foxes, wolves, jackals, can now be easily found in the immediate vicinity of people:

• personal plots;
• summer cottages;
• tourist bases;
• pastures;
• urban green areas - parks, squares, plantings, alleys;
• cemeteries.

This bloodsucker is very fond of living on the territory of dog enclosures and kennels where purebred dogs are bred.

Who can fall prey to dog ticks

This representative of ixodid bloodsuckers is no exception and also refers to polyphages - polyphagous arachnids. That is, it does not matter to him whose blood to suck for saturation and further development.

Therefore, in principle, any warm-blooded animal and person can become a victim of tick-borne attacks.

• The larvae, which can climb the plants no more than half a meter, feed on small rodents, birds and reptiles.
• Medium-sized animals, as well as people, especially children, are already available to nymphs, which can conquer a height of about a meter.
• Adult ticks, which can climb bushes and tall plants, have the opportunity to cling to large mammals and humans.

Since it is sufficient for the ticks to feed themselves once in each of the stages of transformation, they stick to the host for a long time. The female is saturated the longest - she can suck blood for about 14 days, after which she will lay a clutch and die.

What is the danger of a dog tick bite

Dog ticks are more dangerous than taiga ticks, and they pose a threat of contracting infectious diseases dangerous to health both for humans and for domestic animals - dogs and livestock.

To people, these bloodsuckers, when puncturing the skin and injecting their own enzymes, transmit pathogens of such diseases:

1. tularemia;
2. tick-borne encephalitis;
3. Marseilles fever;
4. tick-borne borreliosis (Lyme disease).

Increasingly, the facts of simultaneous infection with encephalitis and borreliosis are being recorded. Without proper treatment, the victim of a bite is doomed at best to remain disabled for life, at worst to perish.

For dogs and cattle, dog ticks pose a threat of infection with piroplasmosis, which causes painful and quick death of the animal. To prevent such damage, farm livestock is treated with repellents. Literate dog breeders do the same.

Tick-borne protection measures

In a dangerous season with tick-borne attacks, one should not take lightly the existing threat of becoming bitten. Be sure to protect yourself and protect your children or your own dog.

People need to take the following measures during the peak waves of tick-borne attacks:

1. repellents of any available and easy-to-apply form - creams, gels, sprays;
2. closed clothing of light colors, completely covering the limbs and tucked into shoes or socks;
3. for residents and guests of encephalitis-endemic zones, the best protection will be vaccination, which can be scheduled or urgent.

For dogs, there are effective protective agents in the form of drops on the withers, sprays, collars and tablets for oral administration.

Once in nature, it is important to adhere to simple protective rules - to avoid walking along the edge of paths overgrown with grass and bushes, to stop for the night not in the grass, but in places devoid of vegetation.