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Hey, So just a quick note up top of apologies. Sorry this one is up a little bit later than usual. I know we're probably about twelve to twenty four hours behind on the posting, but I just had a really really bananas couple of weeks with a loved one in the hospital and my wallet got stolen, and also I was moving and doing a couple of different shoots for Netflix and such. Just had a couple of surprises the
last couple weeks. I'm a little bit behind, So sorry this is going up late, but you can expect to edits normal time next week. Also, if you're hearing this before June seventh and you're in the LA area, I will be at the Natural History Museum's First Fridays doing a live ologies Q and A with a curator there. So if you're in La come to first Fridays. Say hello to me. That's on June seventh. Okay, oh hey, it's that sweatshirt. Who's so flattered that you've worn it
three days in a row. But it's starting to get concerned for you. Ali Ward back with another episode of Ologies. You know, there are a few episodes that I've started off just letting you know I wasn't so sure about something. Please see dinosaurs, scorpions, and cats, because I'm just I'm really a dog person. But I ended up loving those things and subjects because what it boils down to is to know something is to respect it. To respect it is to appreciate it. And this episode is ticks. Will
I love them? Well, just listen, but first listen to me. Thanks some people, namely the folks at patreon dot com slash ologies for making the show possible by giving as little as a quarter an episode to ask questions and see behind the scenes info. Also thank you to everyone getting Ologies merch and tagging your Instagram Photosologies merch so I can repost them. Thanks to everyone who just gasses me up on the weekly by subscribing and rating the podcast,
and for reviewing which I shamelessly creep and appreciate. And this week ps Hasheed said, honestly, I wanted to make a lot of environmentally friendly changes in my life. I just never got around to it. This podcast single handedly accelerated me to purchase reusable bags, reusable saran wrap, and produce bags. Volunteer my engineering talents to our Earth's saving needs, spread the news about sustainable practices and infinite other responsible
practices in like a couple months. So they say, thank you for accelerating me towards changing our world.
Huh, thank you.
Let's not stick straws up, turtle noses deal deal Okay, acarology acronology, m I'll figure it out. But it comes from the Greek akari, which means cheese mite or tick, which comes for the word for tiny ps. Side note, I just was like a cheese mite and I just found out that there are certain mites that live on the outside of cheese. Some folks eat them because they impart kind of a floral, earthy flavor. So now we
all know something about cheese mites. Okay, ticks, ticks and mites are a raknets like speiders, but in the subclass akari and tick nymphs have.
Six legs, but they have a glow.
Up and they molt and then boom. Adults have not six legs but eight, an extra pair of legs just waiting to hug and kiss you, and by that I mean cling to you and drink your life juices with its stabby dirty mouth. I love bugs so much, but ticks and cockroaches are too that I just I have a beef with. I want to love them, but their existence in my personal space is just a one way
ticket to barf city. But this was a topic that we should all know more about, and I saw how this ologists work via Twitter, a tick expert based in Connecticut. I gently DMed her, hoping our schedules would align, and sadly they did not for a face to face meet up. And y'all know me, I'd rather brow down in the same room than have like an echoe phone talk. But this ologist was wonderful and recorded her side of the
conversation into our computer. And though the sound quality isn't the same as if we were chit chatting in the same room in a Hampton inn, it's totally clear. And this information is timely as hell. So the weather's getting warmer in the US. Hemlines are crawling upward, lawns are flourishing. We all need to know what the hell's going on
with tics. Now we talk about ticks in this episode, where they live, where they lurk, how to detect them, how dangerous they are, bug spray's conspiracy theories, and what.
To do if you find one on you.
This ologist is a medical entomologist and Associate professor of biology at West Connecticut State University, where she runs the tick Born Disease Prevention Lab, which focuses on the prevention of lime other tickborn infections, which, according to many reports, have just risen very sharply. So how can we stop them from spreading? How do we outsmart these buggy buggers?
So ticks?
What is their deal? Why do they want to kill us? Or are they just like, oh shoot, I was just hungry.
I'm so sorry, dang it.
Side note when it comes to the infections themselves, there's an amazing disease ecologist in San Francisco who studies things you can catch from a tick, and y'all dad words over here just doing her best to interview her this week and make this a two parter, So stay tuned across some fingers. But for now, the first step is understanding the life cycle and the bidy habits and the mind of the tick. This info is critical. So tuck your pants in your socks and get ready. It's about
time for some TikTok with doctor Nita Pardinani Connilleen. So, thank you so much for talking to me. I'm so excited to talk about ticks. You have no idea thrilled.
I'm excited too.
Do you tell people straight off the bat that you work with ticks? Are you excited at cocktail parties to be like, guess what I work on?
Actually, yeah, I used to do that and now I try not to. But I you know, any chance I get, I will talk about it, but I try not to lead with that. I think I learned a long time ago. You know, sometimes it's not always what people want to talk about.
Really, yeah, I would think people would be dying to just milk you for information.
Well, I mean it may have come from a childhood experience I had with talking about HEADLCE at the dinner table at a friend's house.
Learning it was not did you have them?
Oh?
Yeah?
So actually, so I was about eight years old, and my brother and I got sent home from school with head lice. And my mom, she's a pathologist, and she was like, oh cool. So she had a microscope in her bedroom, which didn't seem weird to me at the time, and she, you know, found an adult, you know, head louse in my brother's hair and she took it out and put it under the scope and we got to
look at it. And I was like, this is amazing, and so, you know, not that long afterwards, I went to my best friend's house for dinner and I start telling them about this, you know, close up view of my head louse and having these little claws it was holding onto the hair and it was got these little hairs hanging off of it, and it was the coolest and I was shut down. I learned very quickly that it was uncool and it was not dinner time conversation, and it stuck with me, I think for quite some time.
Some time. Did you get invited back?
And I did. I learned a lot at that friend's house. You know, my parents are from India, and I didn't learn how to you know, eat spaghetti with a fork properly. I didn't know what mayonnaise was until I was in my name, so it was yeah, thank goodness for that friend. I learned a lot about how to be behave.
I think a lot of us don't really know what mayonnaise is. To be honest, your memory needs to be headline and mayonnaise.
Really.
So, wait, no, that is a head louse? Is that a mite?
No, it's a louse type of mit.
No might No it's not.
And so I it's a it's a different organism than okay, a mite. Mites and ticks a related lis are totally different.
Oh I didn't know that. Okay, So when did you start? When did you decide to start studying books?
Oh?
Well, so, I think the way that it the best describe how this sort of evolved was when I was a biology made and everyone in my family basically as a medical doctor, and I think there was this expectation that I would head that direction, and you know, I'm interested in human health. But I took this parasite biology
class in college and it was very cool. So human parasites, so you know worms, and you know things that live inside, but also things that live outside, you know, ecdoparasites, And so I thought it was really amazing and so interesting. And then I went on to pursue a graduate degree in parasite biology. And it turns out a lot of the parasites that you know are found inside people are transmitted by insects and arthropods, like like tics, and so
it just sort of evolved in that way. So I found myself living in a place where black legged ticks were ubiquitous, and and so it really just felt felt very natural to be able to study to start studying these these organisms.
And were you raised in Connecticut or did you go there for school?
I did not. I was raised in upstate New York, outside of Albany, and so that is where I started my tic journey.
Little background.
Nita got her bachelors in animal biology from Louisiana Tech, Masters in Public Health studying human parasitology from Tulane University in New Orleans, and then went on to earn a PhD in environmental science focusing on medical entomology from the University of Rhode Island. She's also been an associate research scientist at the Connecticut Emerging Infections Program at.
Yale's School of Public Health.
Woman knows ticks really the work that I've been doing related to ticks since nineteen ninety eight has been in the northeastern United States.
Wow, which is the place for them? Yeah?
Well, yes, the black leged ticks for sure, the dear tich.
And now have you heard of the Have you heard of the word achronologist to anyone ever?
Acarologist? Yes, acharolois.
Yes, I have like one job here and that is to furnish the ologies.
But sometimes, despite having them on.
My radar for years, I just boo, oops, can't remember what they are. So I just did the equivalent of when your dad doesn't know a band name but tries to act like he does. So just quietly mortified. But we're going to move on.
I don't normally call myself an acarologist, but I guess I technically I would be. I tend to call myself a medical entomologist, entomology being the study of insects and arthropods, and the medical piece being the part about where these these organisms are important for causing disease and humans.
And now getting to what is a tick?
Obviously it's an arthropod, but can you be more specific about what makes a.
Tick a tick? And how did they get that way? Oh, how did they get that way?
Okay? So what makes it take?
A tick?
A tick is an organism that's sort of a cousin of spiders. It's also related to mite, and it is distinguished from insects, meaning it is not an insect by some key features. Whereas an insect would have three body segments and six legs, ticks do not have three body segments.
They really have one major body segment, and then they have this sort of head area, at least in the tick that I study, and it's called a basis capitulum, and ticks in most stages have eight legs similar to their they're spider and my cousins.
Quick aside, isn't it weird that every tick has grandparents and cousins, like every bug you see has uncles.
Anyway, they are parasitic and so they require a blood meal in order to carry out their life cycle.
Just the words. It's not dramatic like dug me.
Just it feels definitely like they're a tiny, tiny villain in a story.
Do we just know them as villains? Or are ticks good for anything?
Well, I mean in the general you know ecosystem, the ticks will service food sources for you know, other organisms like birds will eat them for example. But if you're asking me, you know, would our world be okay if we eradicated all the tics? You know, I don't know the answer to that. I personally really admire ticks very much.
Of course, I don't want people to become sick, but I think they're really if you if you learn a little bit about them, you could kind of admire how they've evolved to be pretty sneaky and although they are the villain, like, you know, they do a really good job at it.
What are some of the things that you admire about ticks and how they go about doing their business?
Okay, Well, in the tick that I primarily study is the black legged tick, and many people call that the deer tick. And it is a very like hardy animal, right, so it can survive, you know, in temperate regions of the United States and the Northeast, in the Upper Midwest, and so it can sustain very cold temperatures like it can live in you know, Minnesota and Wisconsin where it's very cold. It can live for a long time under
the snow. It lives for a long time. This particular tick has a two year life cycle.
Two years.
Granted I have refrigerator mustard older than that, but still that's twenty four of your periods. That's two hanukkahs. That's a longer lifespan than some pairs of shoes or the span of getting.
A master's degree.
So just think you could meet someone, fall in love, move in together, fall out of love, break up, and maybe be over it, and there's still a tick out there that was on the planet for all of it. That was sadder than I intended, but whatever.
It's kind of hard to kill this tick. And on top of that, when it is when we think of it as a parasite, as something that you know, requires a host in order to carry out its life cycle, it really has a you know, evolved to have these features that makes it go, you know, undetected. So this tick in particular, and many tick species will feed for several days on a host. And so if you think about a mosquito, you know, it lands, it takes a quick blood meal, and by the time you realize it's there,
you know you've swatted it away. And so you know, when a tick has to feed on a host for several days, it doesn't want to be detected, right, So it has this saliva that is full of all sorts of components that can fight the host immune system, so you don't typically when you're being a host for a tick, you may not feel it. You won't feel itchy, you don't feel paid, because it has in its and it's saliva, It has alvasodilators, it has anti coagulation factors, it's got
these substances that really can protect it. And also it keeps your blood from plotting, and so you can it can just start pulling in that blood very effectively.
Okay, so just a little aside on why they are tiny, creepy vampires. So many tick species need a blood meal to get to its next life stage, kind of like a video game leveling up, only they are detecting your breath, your odors, and your movement and sometimes crawling on vegetation and outstretching their top two legs waiting to hug you. This very thirsty behavior is known as questing, and I hereby think it should be applied to humans who go out looking for a sugar mama, or a money daddy
or a non binary bucksfuck. That last one could use some workshopping any usel, they find some skin, they you like a bitch, and then they stick their straw face in you, sometimes using cement like saliva to tack it down like hot glue on a bad craft project. So their saliva might contain a few thousand proteins that do everything from and nesthetize you to administer like an anti inflammatory so your skin doesn't freak out and tattle that
you are being used as a blood buffet? Did I mention that they can get engorged with your blood two hundred to three hundred times their original weight. Can you imagine what a boss you'd be if you could hose a soup plantation like that for the price of one meal, like pay fifteen ninety nine and walk out of there weighing four thousand pounds and just set for the winter.
Ticks do that.
They don't even pay the price of admission. They sneak in the back. Well you blinked, I mean respect.
So it's it's pretty good. And it's not to say all people don't have a reaction to tick bites, because some people people have quite a reaction, particularly after they've been bitten several times. But the fact that it can go on undetected, particularly the adult stage tics that are pretty large, It's pretty amazing.
Yeah, it's kind of like the stealth bomber of tiny paras, totally under the radar. And now you mentioned adults versus little guys, and I understand that the nymphs are the size.
Of a poppy seed.
Okay, so quick background on this. I mentioned this in the epidemiology episode with the Doctor's Aaron of this podcast will kill.
You, Hey, ladies.
So the CDC to really viscerally, appallingly, delightfully illustrate how tiny ticks are, put three little baby tick nymphs on a big, like softball sized Costco poppy seed muffin and it wasn't until the third confused zoom in that you could even see their little leggies. US Americans not always fans of truth and consequences. The CDC tod taking it down, but I like to burn the image into your brain, not to ruin muffins, but to make you just stop and think if I had a poppy seed somewhere on
my body right now, would I even know? And as a person who got ranch dressing on her face hours ago, I'm going to wager.
A no here buddies.
So they're very tiny right now in terms of their life cycle. Are a lot of the little guys out in the spring?
Is there a higher risk of tick bites in this time of year. Yeah.
So the way that it works is there's three main stages. There's the larval stage, which usually feeds on small mammals and birds, and then there's the mimph stage, which you said is the size of about a poppy seed. And actually we put them under the microscope here in the lab because we were like, are they really the size of a poppy seed? Yeah, and they actually they are
approximately the size of a poppy seed. But truly, the poppy seed is easier to see I see, you know, it's a little bit darker than an imp stage black legged tick, and and you know, the coloration is more uniform. So it really is maybe easier to see a poppy scene than to see the nymph stage tick.
But the tick in its nymph stage.
In this region the northeastern United States and in the Upper Midwest where it's most common, are typically active, most active in the spring and early summer months, so we really see them start coming out in May and then really picking up after Memorial Day, with their activity peaking in the early a few weeks of June, and then you know, slowly, you know, subsiding as we get into the end of July. And it's not to say that you couldn't find a nymph during other months of the year.
You certainly can. We collected some nymphs in October last year. But they're most active during the spring and early summer months.
And is that when most people who get a tickborn illness will contract it or does that happen you know, pretty much all through the temperate months.
Yeah, so most cases of lime disease and some of the other diseases that are associated with black legged tick bites occur you know, during the time or shortly after the time when the black legged tick nymph stage is active, so spring and summer we see cases into August and September.
But with that said, the adult stage of tick, which is active in the fall and in the spring and even in the winter when the weather is above you know, freezing, that tick also can transmit infectious agents to humans and actually is twice as likely to be infected than the nyphs.
But the thing about nyphs.
Is that they're out during the time of year that more people tend to be recreating outside. And also they're very tiny, and the adults are a little bit easier to spot. So yeah, it's kind of just you know, it's bad luck for us, but good luck for the tick in terms of their timing of activity.
Okay, so adult ticks bigger and more lime, and disease ridden nymphs less lime. But it's more likely you'll find one in a crevice in spring because no one is out in November picnicking at an outdoor concert series, or making out with a tinder date in a park, or heading to the woods to cook over a fire, or making an appearance in a speedo trying to get that D that's sweet, sweet vitamin D. So what about flim flammery? Is there any that Nita would just like to take to the mat and debunk.
Yes, thank you for this opportunity. Ticks do not fly, they don't jump, they don't hop. Right, So you hear a lot of people saying that the ticks are falling out of the trees under their heads, and so that
is unlikely to happen. Well, they're on the vegetation. You know when when they're the smaller stages are looking for mice and birds and they're kind of low to the ground, and then the adult stages are looking for deer, and they tend to crawl up a little higher on the vegetation to find a deer, and then they'll crawl upward on people until they find a good spot. So if you find a tick on your head, it probably found you somewhere lower on your body and crawled up and
it didn't fall out of a tree. So that is something that I think is often misunderstood. I've got and I think that's the big one.
And that and that and leaving the head end.
We don't really leave the whole head in, just the feeding tube when you remove a tick, and and I think just getting removing it is the most important thing. So even if you leave a little piece of the mouth parents better than leaving the tick attached.
Right do you ever look at doctor pimple Popper?
Oh my gosh, it's funny you mention that, because I actually don't really watch TV. And recently we had a friend over and it was late in the night and they decided to show us this and it was really something.
Wow, that's disgusting.
There was this one little video she posted where she's like, yeah, I was treating a patient dermatology patient and his girlfriend was like, hey, can you.
Check out this growth I've got.
We had it for a couple of days and she looked at it was like a fully engorged doc tick, just floopy flopping off of her abdomen. And doctor pimple Popper was like, yeah, that's a tick. But I guess you just thought it was a new mole.
Wow.
I know. Well so that so that surprises me a little bit, just because you know, adult tics, particularly dog ticks, are quite big, and particularly when they're in gorge. I mean think of like a raisinet. That's really what they look like to me. Yeah, sorry if I ruined raisinetes for you forever, but I you know they do. That's if you put an in gorged female deer tick next to a raisinet, they're almost hard to tell apart and
I and I that's how big it is. If you had one of those hanging off your ear abdomen, I think that would be at least for me, would be alarming. See the head right there, and this is the body here with the feet, so we need.
To try to pick it up.
Sorry my hurting you.
God, that thing was on tight.
But you know, with nymphs, even when they're engorged with blood, you know, they're still very small and and so I think that, you know, not being able to detect one or no or just think it's like a sleck of dirt is very common.
I do love the CDC poppy seed muffin comparison.
That was great. I was so bummed when they had to take it down. People were grossed out.
You know, it's see.
I love that.
I also think that that was great and very effective, and I know it maybe ruined poppy seed muffins for some people, but I thought it really just drives home the point and the visual of like, this is what you're looking for. So so maybe we can bring back the poppy seed muffins.
It's better to be grossed out for thirty seconds on Twitter by a poppy seed muffin than to be, you know, putting yourself at risk. What's the best way to not get bitten by one? Is it repellent? Is it wearing just a wet suit?
I'm one suit of armor. Yeah, so unfortunately, in you know, the forty years since lime disease was first described, you know here in the state of Connecticut, we you know, haven't really done a super job at getting people to prevent disease. In fact, a number of cases in the nation has been growing rather than rather than subsiding. But what we we do know from from many research studies is that there are some things that may be protective
against lime disease specifically. So, for example, we know that in a couple of studies, performing bodily tick checks frequently can be protective against lime disease. So that is inspecting your body, and that includes your entire body, so particularly the cracks and the crevices and the you know arm becausey yeah, well right, so because a tick will crawl
up right, so it'll crawl, it'll find its host. It'll be waiting on the vegetation for a host to walk by, and so it may you may encounter it at your leg, but if there's no skin showing there, it will keep walking up until it finds some skin. So that might mean it will crawl under your shirt and into your arm pit or up into your hair behind ears. We find a lot of them at places that are constricted by say a bra strap or underwear wiste bands, those
kinds of things. And so performing a tick check is a good idea, and actually performing when daily is a great idea. Because the lime causing tick, the black legod tich, is unlikely to transmit the bacteria that causes lime if it's been attached less than twenty four hours.
Oh okay, so this is amazing news. There's a magical window, an almost biological grace period in which you are less likely to have one of these tiny bastards drool a disease into your blood. So take a moment to just feel yourself all around. Get comfy with a hand mirror. Also, you can do this one thing that people on the bus might appreciate as well.
Yeah.
So the other thing you can do, and there's a couple of studies that support this, is take a bath or shower shortly after coming in from being outside. So that could work in a couple of ways. So you could be washing off ticks that haven't yet attached. If the tick is attached, you know it's not going to wash off. Unfortunately, it will stay there. The water will not do anything to deter it, but if you haven't hasn't attached, you could maybe wash it off. You're also
removing the clothes that you're wearing. They may have ticks crawling upon them. And another thing you can do, and this is all this sort of personal protective measures you can take. You can take your clothing after you've been outside and put it right in the dryer. There was a study that showed that if you put the clothes directly into the dryer and dry them on high heat for ten minutes, that should kill the ticks that are crawling upon them.
What do you do when you're out in field season and your job is literally to get yourself close to like a tick bomb and just drag layers of cloth through tick infested weeds? Like what do researchers do? Do you just cover yourselves in?
Like? Dat what happened?
Yeah? Well so in my case, my goal is to get as many ticks as possible, so I don't cover my self indeed at all. In fact, in you know, when I'm sampling for adult tics, I find that I'm more effective using my body as a method to collect ticks than to use a flannel tick drag or a flag, which is what we use typically to collect nymph stage ticks, and so you know our field staff, I of course want to keep everyone very safe. They wear long sleeve
white coveralls that zip up to the neck. They tuck their pants in long white socks, and depending on the study that we're doing, oftentimes we have those coveralls. They are treated with products that contains permethrin, which is a access a pesticide and also a repellent which we know is very effective at repelling and killing ticks or knocking them down. And so you actually can buy this stuff to put on your own clothing, and it's great because
it lasts through many washings. So it's a it's called permethrin, and you can either buy a retail clothing item that is already factory impregnated with permethrine, or you can buy the spray. Usually you can find it at camping and hiking retailers.
Okay, side note. I know all about this chemical because I was covered in a constellation of red itchy bumps in Hawaii last November, and I spent most of my time in Paradise convinced I had scabies and rubbing this formula on me just in case turns out it wasn't scabies, just mosquitoes. But now I have half a tube of this in my medicine cabinet, and I just hope no one discovers and googles it. I feel like we're closer
now that I've shared. Anyway, It's a synthetic form of compounds found in chrysanthemums, and it acts by disrupting nerve cell membranes, causing paralysis and death of some ticks and mites and other bugs. You can also just miss it on your cargo shorts and not on your actual body, but rubbing some fresh mums down your pants likely will not.
Do the trick.
It also wouldn't hurt if you wanted to, and you can spray.
Say you have gardening clothes or clothes you do yard work in, you can spray that, and those could be the clothes you wear outside. But typically we don't, you know, we don't we want the tics, so we just are you know, have eagle eyes. We check one another after being at each field site, and we do it that way. But for my children, you know, I have two kids, and everybody knows that TIC checking is part of our
daily routine. Sometimes multiple tic checks a day and taking a bath or shower, particularly this time of year, everybody bathes daily, and I highly recommend that that's not you know, there's all sorts of landscaping things that you can do in your backyard, but you know, taking a bath or shower is really you know, it doesn't cost a lot. We like it when people bathe. It's not controversial. It's easy to do.
Well.
It depends on if you're depressed, but yes, that should be easy.
Yes, okay. Have you ever gotten bitten by a tick?
Oh? Sure, absolutely, I've been bitten many times by ticks over the years, and it's a I think a hazard of the occupation.
And now you obviously you study lime disease, which is such a huge.
Issue right now.
Have you ever worried that you have contracted lime disease or what are your personal feelings about it?
Oh? Well, certainly lime disease is a very important human disease, and everyone should who lives in an area where these ticks are prevalent should be aware and really try to prevent it. Now for myself, so, I don't know if you call this lucky or unlucky. I've had in my life. I've always been extremely sensitive to the bites of many different kinds of arthropods, so I have a severe allergy to many types of stinging bees, fire ants, I can mosquitos.
I have very poor reaction. And so even with tics, when they I think as soon as they attach and start to salivate, which they do to anchor themselves into the skin, before they even start to take blood, I will get quite a large reaction to these organisms, and I'll be able to detect it and remove it.
Okay, a quick rundown of what is in the ticks tool kit, and by that I mean they're a live face. So they have two palps, which are parts of their mouth, like little tough mustaches, and they have callisceri which cut through their host's skin. And then of course they have that one barbed needle like hypostome, kind of like a cross between a boba straw and Satan's tiny pitchfork. But Nita isn't a frequent victim, thankfully.
So I've never had a tick feed particularly long on me. Actually, I'm not sure a tick is ever, you know, taken a blood meal, at least not a black legged tick. I did once find a dog tick in my hair
that might have been there for a day. And the dog tick carries you can transmit Rocky Mountain spotted fever, but not lime disease, and Rocky Mountains spotted fever is much more rare, and it was okay, but yeah, it's something we take very seriously because this tick that we study can carry not just one but actually five recognize tickborn illnesses. It's full of all sorts of different microorganisms that who knows, you know, may turn out to have
some sort of human disease causing capability. And so all of our you know, seasonal staff and anyone who's working in tick research, we are very careful about being safe and protecting ourselves.
Okay, we're all crossing our fingers. I made this a last minute, opportunistic two parter with a disease ecologist, but just to wet your infectious barbed whistle, here are some other things ticks can spit into you and a plasmosis, babiosis, bore Yella, bourbon virus, Colorado tick fever, er lichiosis, Heartland virus, lime disease, Poacan disease, ricketsiosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Southern tick associated rash illness, tickborn relapsing fever to laramia, some
robot sounding thing called thirty six for d ricketsiosis ticks. I know it's not your fault. You just got caught up in a bad disease racket, but dang, you are not welcome in my bot crack. So let's lightly touch on a few though. Let's talk a little bit about the diseases in particular. You mentioned that you study five, but is the one that's at the forefront the most lime disease just because of its prevalence right now?
Oh, absolutely so. Lime disease is the number one reported vector borne disease in the country. So cases are reported by doctors and laboratories to state health departments, who then report them to the CDC, and the CDC counts them,
and so each year there's about thirty thousand cases. But a couple of studies have estimated that that's very well underreported, and that there was a study well twenty fourteen, twenty fourteen, I think it's estimated that the true number of cases is probably about ten times that, maybe three hundred thousand cases per year in its early stages. If caught or
most people will be treated and be okay. But in its late stages, or in some percentage of the population, even after treatment, they will have persistent symptoms or symptoms that go away and come back. And so those late stage complications of lime disease can be very serious. It can involve severe arthritis and neurological involvement, PARTI ACT complication, facial paralysis, many types of things.
And now with lime disease, can you tell me a little bit about what are some of the symptoms of it and is there a difference between late stage and chronic lime?
What are we looking for?
Yeah, so I'm not a medical doctor, but I can tell you that in its earliest stages, lime disease can present itself in a very vague way, kind of flu like symptoms and fever and malaise and you know, feeling generally terrible. So unfortunately, sometimes it goes undiagnosed. The telltale early symptom of lime disease is what we call many people call it a bullseye rash or an EM which
stands for your thema migrants rash. And this is a red rash that will appear usually at the bite site, but sometimes some area away from the bite site and there may be multiple ones of them, and they they are typically painless, and so they can go undetected and they expand and expands over a period of days or weeks and then it will disappear. And so you can imagine if you were bitten behind the knee, you may not see any rash that appears.
If you need a visual this rash looks like if the target logo got a little sloppy drunk and manifested itself on your skin, as if by a ghostly possession.
Not to be dramatic, and so well, it's believed most people who do get infected with lime do get a rash. Not everybody does, or it may go undetected again because it's not painful or itchy and so, but that sign occurs between three and thirty days after infection. If you can catch that symptom, which is a very classic clinical symptom of lime disease, you know, that's like one of the earliest symptoms and so you can treat it well and it's later stage. We're talking about things like I
mentioned before, in a severe arthritis. There are cases of limecarditis, which is a heart infection. Other neurological issues, and it really can run the gamut.
And when it comes to having lime disease that might be resolved with an antibiotic versus late stage lime or maybe what some people call chronic lime, how do you differentiate and how do you also feel about some people saying one doesn't exist or I guess it's funny that lime has such controversy around it.
By funny, I mean weird and scary.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And you know, again, like the way that we are this from the science that we do is well, first of all, I'm not a medical doctor. I'm a tip doctor. I guess you could say, and it's definitely true that there's a lot of people who
are very ill. And whether it's lime alone, or it's lime plus some other coinfection, or it's some other tick born illness, or it's some other illness, you know, I can't say, but I know that there's a lot of people who are very very ill from tick born illnesses
and in particular lime disease. And so the place that I come from and the work that we do in our lab is really focused on prevention and understanding tick behavior and also human behavior, so that we can we can prevent lime disease, whether it's early stage or late stage or post treatment lime disease, or chronic lime disease.
You know, if we can do better at prevention science and being able to convince people to do prevention well before they have an experience with illness, then really hopefully, you know, we can stop having conversations or have fewer conversations about how sick everybody is, and really start having conversations about how how well we're doing it keeping people from getting sick.
Right? Are there any documentaries that you like or would recommend on the topic. Are there any that you're like usage tic doctor?
I don't. I don't, and it's probably only because I am. I haven't had a lot of time to spend watching them, so I don't know. I mean, I did see one documentary and I think it was called Under Our Skin or Under Your Skin, and it was very emotionally provoking. I think that it really was moving, really pointed to the problem of people who are sick with lime disease.
The trailer of this is pretty chilling.
We have, I think, horrible epidemic.
And again NITA studies how to prevent the tick born diseases, not how to treat them.
But I also think that there's been a lot of scientists who have been studying this topic for a long time, and so sometimes those scientists have become, you know, enemies of the public, and I just I want everyone to get along. I try not to watch that stuff because I want I know that me personally, like, this is my life and my career, and I really feel strongly about wanting to do a good job and researching my field of study.
Obviously, lyme disease is a very charged topic, so charged in fact that.
But we made some videos recently, so maybe I can tell you about those if you have. We said there's a lot of I wouldn't say controversy, I'd say questions and confusion about how people can use pesticides in their backyards to reduce the tech populations in their backyards. We
get a lot of questions about that. And so recently the Environmental Protection Agency awarded US a grant to try and tackle the science communication issue regarding you safe but also judicious and effective pest societies for controlling techs and because unfortunately there's a lot of stuff out there on the market and there's all sorts of rules and regulations about how things can or don't have to be labeled and what you can say about how effective they are,
and so it leads to a lot of confusion, and we think, you know, people either over apply stuff or they apply stuff that doesn't work, but they feel like they're safe. And so we made these, you know, story based videos.
Nita says that she's trying to communicate this science in a way that's conversational, kind of like two neighbors just yacking about precautions and sharing good advice about the black legged tick, which is a super hearty mothersucker. Anyway, go to spraysafeplaysafe dot org against spray safe playsafe dot org and you will find Nita's videos and a wealth of information on how to deal with these little backyard pests.
There's also different types of control methods discussed, everything from essential oils to fungus based ones to synthetic chrysanthemum juice which is not the scientific term for it, but for me, roids is hard to say and I already watched achar acroology. Yes, spray safe, play safe has you so covered in safe and effective pesticides.
And so We just want to make sure that if people, you know, it's the decision to use a pesticide is totally a personal one and you know, whether you want to use it or not is up to you. But if you're going to use it, we want you to be armed with all the information to make informed choices.
So it's not just like throw a grenade in the backyard.
No, but you know, I've been places where people have said they're going to like pave over the whole backyard, which is really sad to me. Or they say, you know, my rule to the children is don't touch anything green outside, right, I know, And I'm like, is that what it's coming to? I think that, you know, we really want people to be aware but not afraid, because I think just you know, arming yourself with knowledge is really important in terms of being able to keep yourself safe.
Well, what about these pick populations seeming to go up or lime disease spreading? I know, I've looked at maps from the CDC that have shown where lime disease essentially was first kind of identified, which you know, old lime Connecticut, and then having it seeing it kind of like bleed out. So to see these maps go to the CDC website and you can type in historical data. I'll also link this in the show notes and on my website, so clicking year by year, it's kind of like seeing blue
dots hemorrhaging like ink. And in twenty seventeen, the only states which did not have reported cases on lime disease were Oklahoma and Hawaii. And I asked Nita about where are these black legged ticks hanging out? Are they moving out of the Northeast, Are they like aging hipsters going to the suburbs. I understand that a lot of folk sinkets, maybe just in the Northeast, but it's been identified in ticks in all the continental US, right.
Yeah, so the black legged ticks species is you know, fairly spread in many places of the US. Besides the Northeast and the upper Midwest. We have this same species, you know, down all the way in Florida and Texas as well, and in the states in between. The ecology of the tick is a little bit different, and so even though we do see the tick, we see less disease.
And I think up here in the Northeast, in this part of the country, we have sort of this perfect storm of transmission, and it has to do with how the ticks behave and how the host behave. We have this issue of climate change as well, which really I think is going to make the tick situation a lot trickier.
And really it is changing even more than you've seen it in those maps, because the tich range has been spreading, you know, northward and westward, and so we commonly now see black legged ticks up in Canada, and so cases of lime disease are more frequently reported in Canada. Now.
One thing I don't recommend looking at unless you like to be very grossed out, appalled and sad for a moose is a photo of mooses covered in ticks to the point where they look like they're doused in pebbled concrete or like the underside of a boat that's been barnacled. I want to help the moose so badly, even though given that I am untrained and helping moose with ticks, it would probably like to kick me in the face.
Nita says that we have other tick species that are also encroaching tick, for example, the lone star tick, which sounds like the town asshole walking through saloon doors to suck your blood and leave you with an infectious souvenir. So their range is in the East, Southeast, and Midwest United States. A NITA says, in recent years they've been detecting them more and more, which means they're coming for us pointing mouth suckers drawn.
And this tick is really important because you know, it also can carry different disease causing agents, different than lime disease. And also it's been implicated in causing a severe red meat allergy and we're talking like yanophylactic red meat allergy. And the thing about that loan Star tick is like it is a seriously aggressive humanviter. And so it's different than these dear ticks who just kind of hang out and wait for you to walk by and they'll grab hold.
The loan Star tick will detect you from far away and we'll come after you. Yeah, And so I think that you know, talk about you know, you think mosquitos are a nuisance. I think you know, nothing would ruin a technical and a bunch of loan Star ticks coming along and you know, wanting to grab hold and just do.
Not under any circumstances. Imagine a wave of lone star tics cresting and crashing into your wine and cheese basket, aimed at your warm crevices.
Don't imagine it. Don't imagine it, don't do it.
In addition, you may have heard that there was a new tick in town, an invasive tick species. I don't know if you've heard this, but there's so yes. So a couple of years ago, a sheep farmer in New Jersey was covered in these tiny little ticks and she went to the health department and they were like, take off your pants because they're everywhere, and they put her
pants on the freezer. And it turns out this tick is a tick that had previously not been established in the United States, and it's known as the Asian longhorn tick.
So, according to the CDC, as of May twenty eighth, twenty nineteen, which was like one second ago, longhorned ticks have been found in Arkansas, Connecticut, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, and researchers are looking to see where else it's gone. So Google image search them and be aware. They're kind of like a reddish brown color with what appears like long legs and they can be up to the size
of a pee fully engorged. Why are we freaking out about them?
And so this tick in Asia is a serious vector of human disease. It carries a virus. It can also cause a rock like a rocky mountain sort of spotted fever type illness. And then it's a serious test of livestock. And so it's it's now established itself here in New Jersey and Staten Island and parts of Westchester County, New York. And this tick is really scary because it can reproduce bi parthenogenesis. So what that means is the female she
can she doesn't need a male mate to reproduce. So one female can create, you know, a thousand or more babies, just essentially cloning herself. And so we really are watching watching this tick and what it's going to do, and we're you know, right in sort of the center of where it has now become established. So we're really in a place of sort of I think in this region around New York City and heading northward, this sort of tick apocalypse, I guess you could say, where a lot
is going on. And so I think we have a lot, you know, to learn, and then we're going to be seeing a lot of changes in terms of what the ticks are doing in the next decade.
This is terrifying. Also, one question why why why why.
Is it that there are more ticks, or that there are more deer, or that there are more like whitefooted mice, that there's more development so there's less land, so they're more concentrated.
Like why is it such a boom town for ticks?
Yeah, well, so part of it is like if you think about what the landscape looks like. So the ticks have been around a long time, but if you think about what this part of the country looked like, you know, in the year nineteen hundred, it was primarily an agricultural place. Right, there's a lot of farmland and pasture land in the deforestation and you know, to make these grazing areas and so oh, the white tailed deer we're not so you know, abundant.
As we've sort of you know, reforested this part of the country, we've really led to an abundance of white tailed deer. And so we know that there's a link between the abundance of ticks and the abundance of deer, because deer are the primary reproductive host for the ticks. So the more deer, there's more opportunity for the adult
ticks to reproduce. And so the other thing that's happened is that we really have started to move into these forested landscapes so and in doing so, we fragmented those landscapes, and so we've sort of made all these little cuts into the forest. So we're living sort of right in the habitat where the ticks live and the deer live. And on top of that, by fragmenting the forest, we create a lot of edge habitat, and edge habitats are really really great for you know, deer love them, mice
love them. We find a lot of ticks right in the edge. And so the riskiest place really for encountering a tick in this part of the country is really in one's own backyard, particularly in that region the echo tone we call it, you know, and right where that place where the lawn is meeting woods is really your riskiest spot. But yeah, it's kind of all of the above. You know, there's a lot of deer, there's a lot of ticks, and there's a lot of people living close to them.
How do you feel about the conspiracy theories about lime disease having started in Plum Island as biowarfare and then spreading from there.
Uh, no comment.
I don't think it's likely. You know, it's so complicated. Like if I were going to make a I'm not. I don't want to. But if I were to think about what would make a good bio terrorist agent or bio warfare agent, I don't think I would want to choose a tick that needs all these things right, It needs to has a two year life cycle, it only feeds three times in its life, and you know it needs all these different hosts. It just seems too unlikely to me personally.
That was the dumbest question ever.
But I just wanted to know, like, oh no, we've figured out that that's completely legit.
Oh no, yeah no, And as far as I know, it's not legit, and I you know, I just seems unlikely. I when you think about some of the biowarfare agents, like tularimias. One tularimia can be transmitted you know, by a tick, but it also has can be transmitted in other ways. And so I think, like, you know, having only one way to transmit it, or something that doesn't persist in the environment very long without a lot of other factors, and and something that you know people are
always going to encounter. It just doesn't seem like the you know way, especially because I mean with all different diseases out there, you know, if you want a biowarfare agent, would want to cause a lot of death, I would think, right, So, so I think lime can be very serious and even fatal in some cases, but it's not causing a high degree of mortality.
That's funny that to think that someone would come up with a by a warfare scheme and their boss would be.
Like, sorry, just not fatal enough. Yeah, keep working on this.
Well really, I mean yeah, I mean I think to be a good bioweapon you really have to think about those things. And I don't want to think about those things. But when I think about lime disease being bio terrorist agent, I think it just seems not terribly plausible to me personally.
That makes me feel a little better. Yeah, we're a lot under a.
Touch, Yeah, but you know what I mean, that thing about underreporting, I mean, for me, I think, like we know, there's a lot of cases of lime disease, and we know there's a lot of ticks out there, and so I just sort of have this attitude that is, you know what, if you live in a place where there are tics and you go outside, or you have a pet that goes outside, you're probably at risk and you
should take preventive action and percussion and be aware. No matter what, and whether they're counting the case or not, you can still get sick and your doctor can still treat you. And so I think counting cases and things may be important for some people in terms of trying to show the scope of the problem, but in terms of keeping yourself safe from being sick. You know, we know people get sick, and we know there's a lot of ticks and ticks are bad.
What do you do if you have a pet that's out romping?
Yeah, well, I mean I have two Australian shepherds. They're awesome and they are my best field assistants. They come out with me, and so we do know there are some studies that, you know, really kind of point to pets that go outdoors as potentially being an additional risk factor for getting a bite by a tick. And so treating your pets with a tick prevented product is a
good idea. And you know, treating them all year long, not just during spring and summer months, because you know, we'll find ticks in December if the temperatures are above forty degrees here, and so I, you know, use a collar on my dogs. They're you know, it's good for
eight months. It kills and repels. And there's oral preventatives where the dog you know gets a pill or the cat you know, gets a pill in the every month and then if a tick starts to bite, it will it will die before it can feed to completion, and so they can work that way. There's these topical spot treatments that can work in different ways, either repelling or killing on contact or also treating such that the tick attaches and then dies while it's feeding. And which is better.
I don't I can't say, uh, but I think it's very important to treat your animals with a tick product all year long.
Better than not having an animal, I guess, or you could just get goldfish.
Yeah, I guess. So, yeah, I've go knowing about it, and I think, you know, when I think about the behavior of dogs and cats, and things. You know, depending on if you know what you're how you behave with your dog, if you take it on a leash, you may be able to avoid some of that most ticky habitat. But you know, if you have cats that go outside, which I've just learned is not its apparently not cool
to do. I thought everyone's cats just went outside, But that's the thing now, and I feel really dumb because I didn't know. But I'm learning now.
Okay, for more on this, listen to the Felinology episode with doctor Michael Delgado. So much I did not know about cats so much. None of us knew about cats.
But people do still have cats that go outside. And so those cats, you know, will go all over, right, they'll go in the woods and I'll be in the leafy areas where the ticks are hunkered down when they're not looking for a host, and so they can Yeah, so they can be exposed in that way. And so even if you don't go outside, if your cat does and then comes back inside and you're petting it, you know, there is a risk for sure.
Yeah, we don't know what cats are doing out there. They're out honky tonking, They're like later days.
Man, oh man, But yeah.
Ornithologists are like, excuse me, yeah, cat's back indoors please, So I guess for if for no other reason, then so that you don't have to check your butt crack for ticks more often, keep your cats inside?
Yeah, totally, And there's I guess there's a lot of reasons now for keeping your for keeping your cats inside. I felt really dumb because I didn't know. No. Maybe it's because I'm a dog person and I'm not a cat person, but I, you know, shout out, I love cat people.
Boy, thank you.
Well, I'm just learning and I but I do know there's a yes for sure these you know, cats can pose a risk to to birds, and there's an issue with feral cats and potential rabi's transmission and certain parts of the country. So yes, PSA, keep your cats and doors.
I talk to a feelinologist who's like, put it on a leash and take it to the park for an hour.
That's just fine.
But I have questions from listeners who are super excited that you're on, And can I ask you some rapid fire questions? Okay, sure, okay, And before we get to the lightning round with your questions. A few words about sponsors I like very much, who also make this podcast possible. But before we get to them, the sponsors also make it possible for us to donate to a charity of
the ologists choosing each week. And Nita enthusiastically supports tickencounter dot Org, saying it's a wonderful science based resource for all things tick related and it's housed at the University of Rhode Island where she worked on her PhD. So they do great stuff. They have so many pictures of ticks tips. That's tickencounter dot Org. So a donation was made to them in her name. Okay, some other things I like this week.
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Back to your questions.
Okay, so Allison Turry wants to know what is the proper method to remove ticks.
If you get me on, you.
Great so the proper method would be get the pointiest pair of tweezers that you can find, grab the tick as close to the skin as you can, and pull it perpendicular to the skin and pull up and you know, deliver. And so we really don't recommend slathering it with vasoline or setting it on fire to get some hairspray, make some flamethrowers, or some people put a meat lit match, you know, which isn't a great idea, So we don't. We want the tick to come out as soon as possible.
The longer it's attached, the more likely it is to transmit things that it's carrying. And we don't really know what happens if you like, soak a cotton ball and peppermint oil and put it on the tick, does it make the tick really pissed off? And then does the tick start salivating more and then more likely to transmit something we don't know? And so you know, we recommend that you just a pointy pair of tweezers pull it straight out. And the thing is, with the pointy tweezers
you can get. The closer you can get, the better because you'll hear people say, oh, I left the head in which is actually impossible. But what you can leave is the feeding tube. It's called a hypostome. It's like a straw, but it's barbed like a fish hook, and so it's hard to get out, and sometimes that breaks off, and that's not the end of the world. To think of it as like a splinter. Eventually it'll work its way out.
Also, when a tick is hungry versus in gorge, they look so much different, and I did not know that until this episode. Full ticks can take on a grayish color. They look like a whole different species. So if you go to tickencounter dot org, you can see different pictures of different stages of feeding. Kind of looks like a big gray brain that's about to burst, pretty gnarly. Ruby Ostrich wants to know how close are we to a human vaccine.
I know that there is a lot of work in the vaccine research field and I don't know the answer to that, and I would like to think that we're within this decade there will be something. And as you may know, there was a vaccine on the market for a short period.
It was removed from the.
Market, so we'll see it. I think that you know the vaccine for lime has a lot of potential. With that said, if the same tick that carries lime can transmit other, you know, pathogens to humans. Still, prevention measures beyond being vaccinated are still really important, like checking your body wearing repellent.
Let's see Raymond J.
Deutsch wants to know what is it about the area of Connecticut that lent itself to the onset of lime disease. Do you think is the altitude or climate or soil composition.
Yeah, well, we have a lot of forest of habitat with deciduous forest in particular, and so the ticks really thrive in under the leaf litter, those dead leaves at the base of the forest. And in these forested areas we have lots of tick or excuse me, lots of white tailed deer, which are the most important host for the adult stage of deer ticks. And so we have great habitat and the Crysta's forests are full of whitefooted mice and other small mammals that can be great hosts
for our ticks. And I think the other piece of it is that we live in the among these hosts and this forest. And then the third thing, and particularly here in Connecticut is that we have in some places an abundance of an invasive shrub plant that's known as Japanese barberry. And unfortunately, these barbary is often sold as an ornamental plant by nurseries and garden centers, and so you can buy it and plant it, and unfortunately it can become very widespread and is really damaging to the
forest ecology. And the thing about Japanese barbary is now we know that places that have more barbary actually tend to have more ticks, and so it sort of adds to this you know, already problematic environment. Now we have to worry about, you know, barberry being something that's going to to help foster this survival and of ticks.
I mean, I get it. Barbary is pink, it's cute, it's evergreen. But barbary GTFO I hate you now, O so down with the barbary?
Yeah, definitely if you have barbary should consider removing it from your yard. Please don't ever buy barbary at your garden center. Find something else to plant. The other thing in backyards that people have besides just like a wooded edge, is in this region, people have this groundcover vegetation like pacissandra or myrtle, and that you know, it's very low to the ground, and then underneath it it's a very
moist environment. So this tick species, the black legged tick, really needs a very high humidity, like eighty to ninety five percent humidity to survive well, and so it spends a lot of time down in that moist environment. So people who have this pacassandra, it looks very nice, but
you know it's a great tick haven. And so that's again something to consider in your own landscape, like should I remove it or if you're going to treat with a tick control product, you want to treat not just the wooded edge, but also you know, groundcover, vegetation or the ticks may also be abundant.
So pacissandra barbary canceled, cancel, yeah.
Or cancel or treat or a treat your yard. But certainly a barbary is bad for so many reasons, not just for ticks. It's just shouldn't be in our forests.
Ooh, that's good to know. I had no idea, yea.
The truth is, you know, I think knowing just knowing about whether or not you are in a risky environment for getting a tick bite can go a long way, and so you know, taking preventive action and knowing what a tick looks like is huge. So a lot of people to send us pictures of ticks or things they've found. They send us stuff in the mail, and you know it's it's not a tick. And if you if you're able to just know the key distinguishing features, can go
a long way towards keeping people safe. And so yeah, I I do. I am full agreement. Lime disease is a major problem. Tickboard illnesses are a major problem in the US, and you know, we're really focused on trying to prevent it. But I think, you know, because we're dealing with humans. You know, we're pretty good actually at controlling ticks, and we're we're not very good at controlling humans.
And so people, we find that people don't always get good at prevention until they've been sick themselves or someone in their family has been sick. And so what we need is people to be thinking about it before they're sick and taking action before they get a tick bite, you know, not waiting until that happens. And it's scarce, you know, Jesus out of everyone. And then and then they go running around trying to figure out what to do.
And the other issue we have is that, you know, there's a lot of misinformation out there in terms of you know, even prevention, which you think is a benign topic. Just this morning, on our you know, community social media pages, someone asked for advice about preventing backyard tics and then the responses you know, really varied from stuff that's science based to you know, totally erroneous and not science based.
And so the age of information has kind of put us in a place where you know, people have to think critically about is this good information? And should I use it? And so that's that's something we're battling now, is trying to understand human behavior and how we can you know, get people to take action and feel you know, empowered to take action in a way that is going to be effective.
And I think that people are a little bit just kind of stunned and don't know what to do. So they're just afraid of getting it without really knowing how to prevent it because they're so little and sneaky that it just seems like getting bitten by a ghost, Like what.
Do you getting too?
Yeah, And so it's good to know that there are measures that you can take to prevent that.
Yeah, and just understanding that like a tick, it takes some time before it actually can can suck your blood.
It's a whole process. They have to salivate and they have to fight your immune system and then they in space they salivate this cement so they can really stick on you and never come out, you know, and not never, but not while they're feeding, and so it but and then they sell it and then you know, the blood is accumulated ticks and they feed really slowly at first, and so like really people like they have the tick, it's been on them for you know, an hour, they
take it off, they have a red mark, and all of a sudden they're like, I need three weeks of doxycycling, right, And and that's not necessarily always the case. Sometimes the red mark is just you're having a reaction to a tick bite or you know, it's it's it's knowing these small bits of information about how these ticks behave or you know, what a tick looks like that can really help you know if you need to run and get three weeks of doxycycling, which you know, has its own issues.
We worry about antibiotic resistance and all of that. So so I think, you know, it's it's getting to know the information. But that's true for all diseases, right, Like you're supposed to be good at preventing all you know, twos decay and so you brush every day. But that's a habit, right, So are you checking for ticks every day?
What's our new motto? Be your crevice's best friend?
Maybe not?
So how can we turn it into a habit? If you can help me figure that out, I'd love.
That significant others can always be a tick check buddy, I'm sure totally.
Well, yeah, and if we know that ticchecking is protective, and we know that showering is protective, maybe you could make that into like a you know, activity together.
Yeah, it's like ticks, but make it sexy.
Really? Yeah, I mean why not if that's what it takes. Yeah, I mean I'm trying to imagine what that you know infographic that we promote next is gonna be. But why not? I mean I think at this point you have to you know, if it's gonna grab your attention and make you take action, then we'll do it, right.
Can I ask you a couple more listener questions?
Sure?
Is that cool?
Don Ewald wants to know there have been some studies about mosquitoes and their possible preferences for certain blood types. Are there any studies on blood types that ticks prefer?
Oh, so it's interesting. There are no studies that I'm aware of that show that ticks have a host preference. We do know with mosquitos that they do. They will seek tend to seek women over men and brunettes over blondes.
Okay, so side note, Apparently there's something about the contrast that the mosquitoes just really dig. So likewise, if you're a brunette on a light sandy beach, just watch out and don't swat them mosquitos. When you swat them, they're like, oh, there you are, and then they just keep writing you. Just FYI. Also, as long as we're going down several holes on this, blondes report feeling more emboldened socially, but
brunette's out earned blondes. For more on why we judge each other for stupid stuff that doesn't matter, see the two part Colology episode about beauty standards. Also, should I mention that one study said that redheads have the spiciest romantic lives. No, I don't want to mention that that's gross. Oops, I did, Okay. I don't know how ticks feel about me though.
With ticks, we don't know, And I think there's some question about that, because you know, you hear from people all the time. You know, my husband and I are both always working in the yard, but he always gets ticks and I never do, and he's more tick attractive. And in terms of whether or not any of that is true, we don't know. What we do know about, particularly about the black legged tick, is that it will feed on everything. It feeds on mammals, it feeds on birds,
it feeds on reptiles, and it really is opportunistic. It feeds on large mammals and small mammals. So I think that this particular tick species, Lime perpetrator, is pretty easy going when it comes to choosing a host. But whether or not it might choose you over me if we were standing right there presenting ourselves as hosts, I don't know the answer, and we do talk about it a lot, and I think it needs further study.
Nita's body, though, lets her note when she's got a sucky blood barnacle. I think it's great that you have essentially a very loud car alarm in your body. That's like you got a tick you gotta take. Yeah, helpful that you have an immune response to it.
Perhaps, Yeah.
And actually so some researchers are, you know, trying to capitalize on that, because there are people who are very reactive to ticks, and so can there be a vaccine that is an anti tick vaccine? Right? And it will make you itchy or reactive to a tick bite so that you catch it before it has time to transmit anything. So using those reactive properties that some people have to try and create a vaccine.
His last listener question is Kelly Dames wants to know how does the town of Line feel about having a disease name you'd.
Have to the town of Lime residents. I really don't know. I mean, they're, yeah, they're sort of famous for this, and I don't know. I guess it's good to be on the mat for some reason. And actually, I mean there was a woman who really was the start of all of this becoming known, and her name was Polly Murray, and she was a very astute mother who was noticing that there were a lot of kids getting arthritis around
the area. And so if it weren't for her real great powers of observation, you know, it might have taken a lot longer to come up with that. So I think the town of Limes should be very proud. And I think, you know, why not be proud of that and having you know, someone who is astute enough to say, Okay, something's going on here.
Yeah.
There was some some kids movie I was watching with my kids.
I think it was like Madagascar or something like that, and they were, you know, Chris Rock his character was like.
Come on, what would Connecticut have to offer us lime disease? Thank you, Melman, I'm my god for Connecticut. That's where you know, that's what we get as being.
Even know what we're known for.
Now, what is something about your job? Last two questions?
I always ask that you really hate what sucks about ticks or your job?
What sucks about ticks? You were making a pun that was great?
No, I swear, I wasn't I swear, but I fully understand that I have no credibility anymore when it comes to denying dad jokes. Okay, but yes, what slices her open and takes a blood meal out of her day.
What sucks.
I mean, I love my job. I feel so lucky that I can, you know, study an organism that I absolutely think is you know, very important and also really very cool from the biology standpoint, you know, as someone who's trying to run research studies. And I guess the sometimes there's a lot of you know, paperwork and stuff like that, and that's that's probably the hardest part. But I think that other scientists may like that more, but
not really for me. I think I feel really lucky that this is something that I get to do for my for my job I really love. I want nothing more than to be out in the field, you know, doing the field work, you know, collecting the tics we'll do well. Last summer we had a study were actually were laying down and we were sitting and we were kneeling. We were trying to figure out what activities get us or you know, you know, be more risky than others. And I mean I could do that all day. It's
my favorite thing. And when I have to stay inside and do a budget or report, I feel so sad to watch everyone go out without me because I would do it all day long, every day. I love it.
Her favorite thing about her job is lying down to have ticks literally.
Eat her alive. God, I love her. I love ologists so much. What was the position that got you the most ticks? Stay tuned.
We only did a We only did a pilot, and we're gonna scale it up a little bit this year. But you know, I think surprisingly to many people, you know, we found that a lot of our ticks were found above the knee from these activities. So, you know, a lot of people think, you know, you're only going to if you're walking through the woods, it's going to end up on your on your shoes. And it may be that, you know, it's when you kneel down to pull a weed, or when you you know, drop you know, pick up
a stick, or you're clearing brush in your yard. You might get it on your arm. And certainly laying down is a risky thing to do in the woods. I don't know how many people do that, but we did it, and uh, and that seemed to I think, I think it was either sitting down or laying down that that exposed us to the most nymph stage ticks. And it was Yeah, it's fun. I I don't say that lately.
I know that you know, ticks are a major risky thing, but I just, you know, just to give you an idea of the things that we do improve prevention, we put ourselves out there.
Well.
My last question is always what's your favorite thing about your job? But apparently yours is lying in the woods waiting for ticks.
Yes, I love it. I love collecting ticks. I love and I also love looking at the ticks under the microscope. They're just they're amazing. If you look at one up close there, it's pretty astounding to see their enemy is really complicated. Just if you could look at a picture of the tick hypostomach, that's their feeding tube. It has multiple like teeth on them and they're they're barbed so that you know, the tick easily can go in, but
it's more hard for it to come out. It's very elaborate, and different tick species have different you know, we call it dentation. It's the different numbers of these little teeth spines, and it's really incredible to look up clothes. So I recommend everyone take a look.
It really looks like if a knife grew more knives on the surface of the knife.
It's a micro horror.
I mean, I love bugs. Yeah, I have to say that ticks are the like takes. It kind of the ones on my shit list of like ticks and cockroaches. I feel bad because I'm like, I do think that it's really great to respect them for how stealthy they are.
So I think that's a great, a really good.
Thing to start. Just outsmart them. It's don't hate them, just outsmart them.
Maybe. I think that's a really great I.
Like that this has one on my list forever. Thank you for being so passionate. I'm so I'm so glad that you got headlights as a child.
Me too.
It's really firm. Who I am? I actually had sort of forgotten about that, and I was telling the story to someone not that long ago, and then I'm like, oh, yeah, you know that could have been the moment.
We're all better for it. So thanks for getting headlines.
Well, I you're welcome. I don't know, yes, bye bye.
So hop on a phone and ask smart people stupid questions because the world is a mysterious and dark and interesting place and I know we're all terrified of ticks. But they did a lot of evolving to get where they're at, and we have pretty big, squishy brains, so let's just try to outsmart them again. So much info is up at tickcounter dot org and Nita's videos are at spray safe playsafe dot org. I will put a
link to my site in the show notes. You can find all this stuff there, and remember daily ticcheck be your Crevis's best friend. Now you can follow Nita because she's amazing. She's at tiklab on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, just at ticklab. God bless her for that uniformity. And her lab website is www WCSU ticklab dot com and I will put a link in the show notes. Ologies is at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. Say hello there, I'm at Ali Ward with one L on both Twitter
and Instagram. Thank you Hannah Lippo and Aaron Talbert for admining the Facebook Ologies podcast group full of curious non jerks who are so sweet to each other. And ologiesmerch dot com has all of your Ologies podcast merch needs shirts and tots and pins and hats. If you post a photo to Instagram tagged with Ologies merch, I repost on Mondays and thank you to Shannon Feltas and Bonnie
Jutch for helping manage that the last two years. They're two sisters who have a brand new, hilarious and charming pod called You Are That, and it's out now wherever you get podcasts, So find it, subscribe and get to know them in episode zero, and then on June tenth, their first episode's.
Drop and you will love them.
Also, Happy birthday to Aiden Feltis on June tenth. Assistant editing was done by Jarrett Sleeper of mind Jam Media. He also hosts the mental health podcast My Good Bad Brain, which has the best theme music ever.
Just trust me, go listen. You'll get it stuck in your head all day and be so happy about it.
Also, thank you to Stephen Ray Morris of the per Cast and see Jurassic Right for stitching this all together every week. This week gets up a little late because someone I love very much was in the hospital and so I was out of town helping out.
And also I had a few backback shoots in the middle of moving.
So I'm just getting my bearings and everything will be good and normal next week, I promise, which brings me to the secret. At the end of an episode, I think two weeks ago, I told y'all that my wallet was stolen at Walmart.
Guess what. Guess what happened.
The sheriff called and someone found it in a bush near Walmart with everything in it but the cash, which at this point is fine. And it's very good because I hadn't even had a chance to tell the DMV that I needed a new ID, and I'm getting on another plane in.
A few hours.
And the TSA side note, does not appreciate expired passports. Is ID. They punish you with a booty massage in front of all the other passengers, but jokes on them because sometimes they squeeze your feet while doing a pat down, and honestly, it's very comforting and I like it.
Okay, all right, you got to check your crevices yourself.
Though they don't do tip checks, don't even ask, not their job. Okay, goodbye, pacadermastology, homeology, crypto zoology, lithology, yeah, technology, meteorology, patternology, napology, zeriology, elology.
I'd like to check here. Imagine the place where you can escape for a day, get immersed in a world of rooms, inspiration and expertise, where you can lay in luxury accommodation and kids can feasts from ninety five sets tickets afreie to every one and include all the attractions you've just imagined a day out at the CAA, the care, the wonderful, every day