4 ms·

Ticks are awful. I used to be completely unconcerned by them as a kid, and have a knack for removing them without breaking, but after having a number of family

Ticks are awful. I used to be completely unconcerned by them as a kid, and have a knack for removing them without breaking, but after having a number of family members and pets affected by Lymes I am super careful. The random tangent about deforestation and global warming seems ideological to me. Ticks aren’t being forced into contact with us, they want to be wherever they can be. If anything my guess would there’s a problem with lack of predators, like a reduction in possums or something similar.

freehunter 9y ago
It's really strange... I grew up on a farm and remember running through the fallow fields barefoot with shorts on all summer, but the first time I actually saw a tick was in my mid-20s after I had moved to the city and took a walk through the local park. Since then I've found at least one tick on me every summer. I don't know if I just got lucky in my youth or if ticks are getting worse, but it's something that's stood out to me as curious.
- Numberwang 9y ago
  I've had similar experiences plus I've ran 1000s of Orienteering races through Swedish forests and fields. Never a single tick. Might be they only go after certain people.
  - petre 9y ago
    I imagine Sweeden is quite cold, more sparsely populated and you probably haven't destroyed so many forests/wildlife as other countries.
    - simonsarris 9y ago
      > and you probably haven't destroyed so many forests/wildlife as other countries. What does this have to do with it? New Hampshire is much more forested than it was 200 years ago. The last two years there have been WAY, WAY more ticks than in the years of my childhood. It's a mini crisis here and is completely unrelated to forest destruction or lack thereof.
      - petre 9y ago
        It's related to deer, mice and bird populations and to lack of big predators that feed on deer. But it's probably much more complicated.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  I had the exact same experience, sans farm. I grew up in a small town, though. Spent a ton of time in the country on friends' farms, lying in long grass in shorts no shirt—all of it. I never had a single tick bite. Horseflies, mosquitoes, spiders, all of that, but never ticks. Even in the city I've (thankfully) never seen one. Now beaches and parks back there (rural south-western Ontario) are littered with "Tick Warning" signs. You're not the only one who's confused and curious about it. It's like they used to be a non-issue. We were warned about them, I remember that—but that's all.
  - randlet 9y ago
    Me too. Grew up in the country (running through cornfields etc) in SWO and never had a single tick or even thought about ticks. Then this year my son picked up a small tick in McGregor Park on Lake Huron which thankfully tested negative for Lyme. The areas around the shoreline of Lake Huron seem particularly bad these days.
- alonmower 9y ago
  Also anecdotal but I grew up in California camping and hiking all the time, never once got a tick. I’ve been in the Bay Area for the last eight and a half years, also spending lots of time outside and nothing. Then, about a week ago, I got a tick while hiking in Point Reyes. Not even going through deep woods, just on one of the well maintained coastal trails. Thankfully I caught it early, I felt what I thought was a pimple near my armpit and investigated on the car ride home only to realize that it was quite a large tick
  - pmoriarty 9y ago
    The thing is you might have had ticks on you and not even known it. You have to be very careful to check all over your body. How many people actually do that? Also, the tick might be in your hair, so you might not even see it. Finally, some baby ticks (which can carry Lyme) are smaller than the period at the end of a sentence. They are very hard to spot.
    - alonmower 9y ago
      Ya, I'll definitely be searching much more thoroughly now. I was lucky that the tick was huge and hard to miss (though it didn't feel that way at the time)
- petre 9y ago
  Times have changed. Ticks in the old days weren't all that prevalent and/or carying Lyme. It has worsened after habitat destruction (less wolves and other big predators, more deer that act as tick breeding ground, more mice that act as Lyme reservoir, more migration).
  - lostlogin 9y ago
    Has the population of the things that eat the ticks declined too?
    - petre 9y ago
      They're insects, I don't think it has anything to do with natural predators but rather environment conditions, their food source and breeding grounds. Just like with the tiger mosquito, climate and car tyres.
- saiya-jin 9y ago
  It's getting worse. Due to overall warming ticks are creeping to areas that never had them (in european alps it is at least 1500m altitude these days). I grew up in relatively cold part of my country around mountains, we never ever had ticks around as a kid. It was just some exotic scourge in the lowlands. These days, they are abundant there. Same goes for example for some exotic poisonous spiders creeping from south. One day, malaria/dengue/yellow fever/etc in central europe will be a reality, unless we eradicate it sooner. No clue whether they increased concentration in the already-present areas though.
- asmithmd1 9y ago
  I had the same anecdotal experience from the North East of the US, maybe once every two or three years one tick - now I can expect to find one anytime I walk in long grass. My thought is the increase in ticks is due to the elimination of widespread DDT spaying, check out this typical scene from 1950's and 60's: http://slideplayer.com/slide/5357033/17/images/22/to+Humans+DDT+-+Powerful+Insecticide,+Harmless.jpg http://slideplayer.com/slide/5357033/17/images/22/to+Humans+... On the positive side, I never saw a hawk or eagle when I was growing up, and they have returned since they are no longer being pressured by insecticide concentration in their food chain. Maybe we could strike a compromise, bomb tick infested areas for a year or two with DDT to knock down the ticks. [edit] A red tailed hawk just perched in the tree outside my window.
mistersquid 9y ago
> The random tangent about deforestation and global warming seems ideological to me. The relationship between insect outbreaks and climate change is not ideological and has a number of studies supporting the theory that insect populations increase and migrate due to climate change. Here's one link [0] culled from a quick search on Google [1] [0] http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051[0723:CCAFD]2.0.CO;2 http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051[072... [1] https://www.google.com/search?num=100&source=hp&ei=CNtxWsyxBIXSjAOElKtY&q=climate+change+insect+outbreak&oq=climate+change+insect+ https://www.google.com/search?num=100&source=hp&ei=CNtxWsyxB...
evandena 9y ago
Well, warmer winters don't suppress the native populations, causing population explosions the following summer.
Momquist 9y ago
> If anything my guess would there’s a problem with lack of predators, like a reduction in possums or something similar. Indeed the abundance of predators, notably martens and foxes, in some areas has been linked with a decrease in infected ticks. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1859/20170453 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1859/2017...
rb808 9y ago
In the NE its largely because of exploding deer & mice populations, 30 years ago they were rare, now its normal to see deer in West Chester & NJ suburbs. Bring back coyotes.
- sehugg 9y ago
  One theory is that coyotes displace foxes, which are better at reducing disease-carrying mice populations: http://www.caryinstitute.org/newsroom/fox-and-coyote-and-ticks-oh-my http://www.caryinstitute.org/newsroom/fox-and-coyote-and-tic...
Fomite 9y ago
"The random tangent about deforestation and global warming seems ideological to me. Ticks aren’t being forced into contact with us, they want to be wherever they can be." - Living in proximity to forest fragmentation is a major risk factor associated with Lyme and other tickborne disease in the United States, and forestry workers worldwide are at staggeringly high risks.

freehunter 9y ago

It's really strange... I grew up on a farm and remember running through the fallow fields barefoot with shorts on all summer, but the first time I actually saw a tick was in my mid-20s after I had moved to the city and took a walk through the local park. Since then I've found at least one tick on me every summer. I don't know if I just got lucky in my youth or if ticks are getting worse, but it's something that's stood out to me as curious.

Numberwang 9y ago
I've had similar experiences plus I've ran 1000s of Orienteering races through Swedish forests and fields. Never a single tick. Might be they only go after certain people.
- petre 9y ago
  I imagine Sweeden is quite cold, more sparsely populated and you probably haven't destroyed so many forests/wildlife as other countries.
  - simonsarris 9y ago
    > and you probably haven't destroyed so many forests/wildlife as other countries. What does this have to do with it? New Hampshire is much more forested than it was 200 years ago. The last two years there have been WAY, WAY more ticks than in the years of my childhood. It's a mini crisis here and is completely unrelated to forest destruction or lack thereof.
    - petre 9y ago
      It's related to deer, mice and bird populations and to lack of big predators that feed on deer. But it's probably much more complicated.
52-6F-62 9y ago
I had the exact same experience, sans farm. I grew up in a small town, though. Spent a ton of time in the country on friends' farms, lying in long grass in shorts no shirt—all of it. I never had a single tick bite. Horseflies, mosquitoes, spiders, all of that, but never ticks. Even in the city I've (thankfully) never seen one. Now beaches and parks back there (rural south-western Ontario) are littered with "Tick Warning" signs. You're not the only one who's confused and curious about it. It's like they used to be a non-issue. We were warned about them, I remember that—but that's all.
- randlet 9y ago
  Me too. Grew up in the country (running through cornfields etc) in SWO and never had a single tick or even thought about ticks. Then this year my son picked up a small tick in McGregor Park on Lake Huron which thankfully tested negative for Lyme. The areas around the shoreline of Lake Huron seem particularly bad these days.
alonmower 9y ago
Also anecdotal but I grew up in California camping and hiking all the time, never once got a tick. I’ve been in the Bay Area for the last eight and a half years, also spending lots of time outside and nothing. Then, about a week ago, I got a tick while hiking in Point Reyes. Not even going through deep woods, just on one of the well maintained coastal trails. Thankfully I caught it early, I felt what I thought was a pimple near my armpit and investigated on the car ride home only to realize that it was quite a large tick
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  The thing is you might have had ticks on you and not even known it. You have to be very careful to check all over your body. How many people actually do that? Also, the tick might be in your hair, so you might not even see it. Finally, some baby ticks (which can carry Lyme) are smaller than the period at the end of a sentence. They are very hard to spot.
  - alonmower 9y ago
    Ya, I'll definitely be searching much more thoroughly now. I was lucky that the tick was huge and hard to miss (though it didn't feel that way at the time)
petre 9y ago
Times have changed. Ticks in the old days weren't all that prevalent and/or carying Lyme. It has worsened after habitat destruction (less wolves and other big predators, more deer that act as tick breeding ground, more mice that act as Lyme reservoir, more migration).
- lostlogin 9y ago
  Has the population of the things that eat the ticks declined too?
  - petre 9y ago
    They're insects, I don't think it has anything to do with natural predators but rather environment conditions, their food source and breeding grounds. Just like with the tiger mosquito, climate and car tyres.
saiya-jin 9y ago
It's getting worse. Due to overall warming ticks are creeping to areas that never had them (in european alps it is at least 1500m altitude these days). I grew up in relatively cold part of my country around mountains, we never ever had ticks around as a kid. It was just some exotic scourge in the lowlands. These days, they are abundant there. Same goes for example for some exotic poisonous spiders creeping from south. One day, malaria/dengue/yellow fever/etc in central europe will be a reality, unless we eradicate it sooner. No clue whether they increased concentration in the already-present areas though.
asmithmd1 9y ago
I had the same anecdotal experience from the North East of the US, maybe once every two or three years one tick - now I can expect to find one anytime I walk in long grass. My thought is the increase in ticks is due to the elimination of widespread DDT spaying, check out this typical scene from 1950's and 60's: http://slideplayer.com/slide/5357033/17/images/22/to+Humans+DDT+-+Powerful+Insecticide,+Harmless.jpg http://slideplayer.com/slide/5357033/17/images/22/to+Humans+... On the positive side, I never saw a hawk or eagle when I was growing up, and they have returned since they are no longer being pressured by insecticide concentration in their food chain. Maybe we could strike a compromise, bomb tick infested areas for a year or two with DDT to knock down the ticks. [edit] A red tailed hawk just perched in the tree outside my window.

mistersquid 9y ago

> The random tangent about deforestation and global warming seems ideological to me. The relationship between insect outbreaks and climate change is not ideological and has a number of studies supporting the theory that insect populations increase and migrate due to climate change. Here's one link [0] culled from a quick search on Google [1] [0] http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051[0723:CCAFD]2.0.CO;2 http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051[072... [1] https://www.google.com/search?num=100&source=hp&ei=CNtxWsyxBIXSjAOElKtY&q=climate+change+insect+outbreak&oq=climate+change+insect+ https://www.google.com/search?num=100&source=hp&ei=CNtxWsyxB...

evandena 9y ago

Well, warmer winters don't suppress the native populations, causing population explosions the following summer.

Momquist 9y ago

> If anything my guess would there’s a problem with lack of predators, like a reduction in possums or something similar. Indeed the abundance of predators, notably martens and foxes, in some areas has been linked with a decrease in infected ticks. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1859/20170453 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1859/2017...

rb808 9y ago

In the NE its largely because of exploding deer & mice populations, 30 years ago they were rare, now its normal to see deer in West Chester & NJ suburbs. Bring back coyotes.

sehugg 9y ago
One theory is that coyotes displace foxes, which are better at reducing disease-carrying mice populations: http://www.caryinstitute.org/newsroom/fox-and-coyote-and-ticks-oh-my http://www.caryinstitute.org/newsroom/fox-and-coyote-and-tic...

Fomite 9y ago

"The random tangent about deforestation and global warming seems ideological to me. Ticks aren’t being forced into contact with us, they want to be wherever they can be." - Living in proximity to forest fragmentation is a major risk factor associated with Lyme and other tickborne disease in the United States, and forestry workers worldwide are at staggeringly high risks.