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Speaker 2: Hey, So just a quick note up top of apologies.
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Speaker 2: three days in a row. But it's starting to get
Speaker 2: concerned for you. Ali Ward back with another episode of Ologies.
Speaker 2: You know, there are a few episodes that I've started
Speaker 2: off just letting you know I wasn't so sure about something.
Speaker 2: Please see dinosaurs, scorpions, and cats, because I'm just I'm
Speaker 2: really a dog person. But I ended up loving those
Speaker 2: things and subjects because what it boils down to is
Speaker 2: to know something is to respect it. To respect it
Speaker 2: is to appreciate it. And this episode is ticks. Will
Speaker 2: I love them? Well, just listen, but first listen to me.
Speaker 2: Thanks some people, namely the folks at patreon dot com
Speaker 2: slash ologies for making the show possible by giving as
Speaker 2: little as a quarter an episode to ask questions and
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Speaker 2: I can repost them. Thanks to everyone who just gasses
Speaker 2: me up on the weekly by subscribing and rating the podcast,
Speaker 2: and for reviewing which I shamelessly creep and appreciate. And
Speaker 2: this week ps Hasheed said, honestly, I wanted to make
Speaker 2: a lot of environmentally friendly changes in my life. I
Speaker 2: just never got around to it. This podcast single handedly
Speaker 2: accelerated me to purchase reusable bags, reusable saran wrap, and
Speaker 2: produce bags. Volunteer my engineering talents to our Earth's saving needs,
Speaker 2: spread the news about sustainable practices and infinite other responsible
Speaker 2: practices in like a couple months. So they say, thank
Speaker 2: you for accelerating me towards changing our world.
Speaker 3: Huh, thank you.
Speaker 2: Let's not stick straws up, turtle noses deal deal Okay,
Speaker 2: acarology acronology, m I'll figure it out. But it comes
Speaker 2: from the Greek akari, which means cheese mite or tick,
Speaker 2: which comes for the word for tiny ps. Side note,
Speaker 2: I just was like a cheese mite and I just
Speaker 2: found out that there are certain mites that live on
Speaker 2: the outside of cheese. Some folks eat them because they
Speaker 2: impart kind of a floral, earthy flavor. So now we
Speaker 2: all know something about cheese mites. Okay, ticks, ticks and
Speaker 2: mites are a raknets like speiders, but in the subclass
Speaker 2: akari and tick nymphs have.
Speaker 3: Six legs, but they have a glow.
Speaker 2: Up and they molt and then boom. Adults have not
Speaker 2: six legs but eight, an extra pair of legs just
Speaker 2: waiting to hug and kiss you, and by that I
Speaker 2: mean cling to you and drink your life juices with
Speaker 2: its stabby dirty mouth. I love bugs so much, but
Speaker 2: ticks and cockroaches are too that I just I have
Speaker 2: a beef with. I want to love them, but their
Speaker 2: existence in my personal space is just a one way
Speaker 2: ticket to barf city. But this was a topic that
Speaker 2: we should all know more about, and I saw how
Speaker 2: this ologists work via Twitter, a tick expert based in Connecticut.
Speaker 2: I gently DMed her, hoping our schedules would align, and
Speaker 2: sadly they did not for a face to face meet up.
Speaker 2: And y'all know me, I'd rather brow down in the
Speaker 2: same room than have like an echoe phone talk. But
Speaker 2: this ologist was wonderful and recorded her side of the
Speaker 2: conversation into our computer. And though the sound quality isn't
Speaker 2: the same as if we were chit chatting in the
Speaker 2: same room in a Hampton inn, it's totally clear. And
Speaker 2: this information is timely as hell. So the weather's getting
Speaker 2: warmer in the US. Hemlines are crawling upward, lawns are flourishing.
Speaker 2: We all need to know what the hell's going on
Speaker 2: with tics. Now we talk about ticks in this episode,
Speaker 2: where they live, where they lurk, how to detect them,
Speaker 2: how dangerous they are, bug spray's conspiracy theories, and what.
Speaker 3: To do if you find one on you.
Speaker 2: This ologist is a medical entomologist and Associate professor of
Speaker 2: biology at West Connecticut State University, where she runs the
Speaker 2: tick Born Disease Prevention Lab, which focuses on the prevention
Speaker 2: of lime other tickborn infections, which, according to many reports,
Speaker 2: have just risen very sharply. So how can we stop
Speaker 2: them from spreading? How do we outsmart these buggy buggers?
Speaker 3: So ticks?
Speaker 2: What is their deal? Why do they want to kill us?
Speaker 2: Or are they just like, oh shoot, I was just hungry.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry, dang it.
Speaker 2: Side note when it comes to the infections themselves, there's
Speaker 2: an amazing disease ecologist in San Francisco who studies things
Speaker 2: you can catch from a tick, and y'all dad words
Speaker 2: over here just doing her best to interview her this
Speaker 2: week and make this a two parter, So stay tuned
Speaker 2: across some fingers. But for now, the first step is
Speaker 2: understanding the life cycle and the bidy habits and the
Speaker 2: mind of the tick. This info is critical. So tuck
Speaker 2: your pants in your socks and get ready. It's about
Speaker 2: time for some TikTok with doctor Nita Pardinani Connilleen. So,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for talking to me. I'm so
Speaker 2: excited to talk about ticks. You have no idea thrilled.
Speaker 4: I'm excited too.
Speaker 2: Do you tell people straight off the bat that you
Speaker 2: work with ticks? Are you excited at cocktail parties to
Speaker 2: be like, guess what I work on?
Speaker 4: Actually, yeah, I used to do that and now I
Speaker 4: try not to. But I you know, any chance I get,
Speaker 4: I will talk about it, but I try not to
Speaker 4: lead with that. I think I learned a long time ago.
Speaker 4: You know, sometimes it's not always what people want to
Speaker 4: talk about.
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, I would think people would be dying to
Speaker 2: just milk you for information.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean it may have come from a childhood
Speaker 4: experience I had with talking about HEADLCE at the dinner
Speaker 4: table at a friend's house.
Speaker 3: Learning it was not did you have them?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So actually, so I was about eight years old, and
Speaker 4: my brother and I got sent home from school with
Speaker 4: head lice. And my mom, she's a pathologist, and she
Speaker 4: was like, oh cool. So she had a microscope in
Speaker 4: her bedroom, which didn't seem weird to me at the time,
Speaker 4: and she, you know, found an adult, you know, head
Speaker 4: louse in my brother's hair and she took it out
Speaker 4: and put it under the scope and we got to
Speaker 4: look at it. And I was like, this is amazing,
Speaker 4: and so, you know, not that long afterwards, I went
Speaker 4: to my best friend's house for dinner and I start
Speaker 4: telling them about this, you know, close up view of
Speaker 4: my head louse and having these little claws it was
Speaker 4: holding onto the hair and it was got these little
Speaker 4: hairs hanging off of it, and it was the coolest
Speaker 4: and I was shut down. I learned very quickly that
Speaker 4: it was uncool and it was not dinner time conversation,
Speaker 4: and it stuck with me, I think for quite some time.
Speaker 3: Some time. Did you get invited back?
Speaker 4: And I did. I learned a lot at that friend's house.
Speaker 4: You know, my parents are from India, and I didn't
Speaker 4: learn how to you know, eat spaghetti with a fork properly.
Speaker 4: I didn't know what mayonnaise was until I was in
Speaker 4: my name, so it was yeah, thank goodness for that friend.
Speaker 4: I learned a lot about how to be behave.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of us don't really know what
Speaker 3: mayonnaise is. To be honest, your memory needs to be
Speaker 3: headline and mayonnaise.
Speaker 4: Really.
Speaker 3: So, wait, no, that is a head louse? Is that
Speaker 3: a mite?
Speaker 4: No, it's a louse type of mit.
Speaker 3: No might No it's not.
Speaker 4: And so I it's a it's a different organism than okay,
Speaker 4: a mite. Mites and ticks a related lis are totally different.
Speaker 2: Oh I didn't know that. Okay, So when did you start?
Speaker 2: When did you decide to start studying books?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: Well, so, I think the way that it the best
Speaker 4: describe how this sort of evolved was when I was
Speaker 4: a biology made and everyone in my family basically as
Speaker 4: a medical doctor, and I think there was this expectation
Speaker 4: that I would head that direction, and you know, I'm
Speaker 4: interested in human health. But I took this parasite biology
Speaker 4: class in college and it was very cool. So human parasites,
Speaker 4: so you know worms, and you know things that live inside,
Speaker 4: but also things that live outside, you know, ecdoparasites, And
Speaker 4: so I thought it was really amazing and so interesting.
Speaker 4: And then I went on to pursue a graduate degree
Speaker 4: in parasite biology. And it turns out a lot of
Speaker 4: the parasites that you know are found inside people are
Speaker 4: transmitted by insects and arthropods, like like tics, and so
Speaker 4: it just sort of evolved in that way. So I
Speaker 4: found myself living in a place where black legged ticks
Speaker 4: were ubiquitous, and and so it really just felt felt
Speaker 4: very natural to be able to study to start studying
Speaker 4: these these organisms.
Speaker 3: And were you raised in Connecticut or did you go
Speaker 3: there for school?
Speaker 4: I did not. I was raised in upstate New York,
Speaker 4: outside of Albany, and so that is where I started
Speaker 4: my tic journey.
Speaker 3: Little background.
Speaker 2: Nita got her bachelors in animal biology from Louisiana Tech,
Speaker 2: Masters in Public Health studying human parasitology from Tulane University
Speaker 2: in New Orleans, and then went on to earn a
Speaker 2: PhD in environmental science focusing on medical entomology from the
Speaker 2: University of Rhode Island. She's also been an associate research
Speaker 2: scientist at the Connecticut Emerging Infections Program at.
Speaker 3: Yale's School of Public Health.
Speaker 4: Woman knows ticks really the work that I've been doing
Speaker 4: related to ticks since nineteen ninety eight has been in
Speaker 4: the northeastern United States.
Speaker 3: Wow, which is the place for them? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Well, yes, the black leged ticks for sure, the dear tich.
Speaker 2: And now have you heard of the Have you heard
Speaker 2: of the word achronologist to anyone ever?
Speaker 4: Acarologist? Yes, acharolois.
Speaker 2: Yes, I have like one job here and that is
Speaker 2: to furnish the ologies.
Speaker 3: But sometimes, despite having them on.
Speaker 2: My radar for years, I just boo, oops, can't remember
Speaker 2: what they are. So I just did the equivalent of
Speaker 2: when your dad doesn't know a band name but tries
Speaker 2: to act like he does. So just quietly mortified. But
Speaker 2: we're going to move on.
Speaker 4: I don't normally call myself an acarologist, but I guess
Speaker 4: I technically I would be. I tend to call myself
Speaker 4: a medical entomologist, entomology being the study of insects and arthropods,
Speaker 4: and the medical piece being the part about where these
Speaker 4: these organisms are important for causing disease and humans.
Speaker 3: And now getting to what is a tick?
Speaker 2: Obviously it's an arthropod, but can you be more specific
Speaker 2: about what makes a.
Speaker 3: Tick a tick? And how did they get that way? Oh,
Speaker 3: how did they get that way?
Speaker 4: Okay? So what makes it take?
Speaker 3: A tick?
Speaker 4: A tick is an organism that's sort of a cousin
Speaker 4: of spiders. It's also related to mite, and it is
Speaker 4: distinguished from insects, meaning it is not an insect by
Speaker 4: some key features. Whereas an insect would have three body
Speaker 4: segments and six legs, ticks do not have three body segments.
Speaker 4: They really have one major body segment, and then they
Speaker 4: have this sort of head area, at least in the
Speaker 4: tick that I study, and it's called a basis capitulum,
Speaker 4: and ticks in most stages have eight legs similar to
Speaker 4: their they're spider and my cousins.
Speaker 2: Quick aside, isn't it weird that every tick has grandparents
Speaker 2: and cousins, like every bug you see has uncles.
Speaker 4: Anyway, they are parasitic and so they require a blood
Speaker 4: meal in order to carry out their life cycle.
Speaker 3: Just the words. It's not dramatic like dug me.
Speaker 2: Just it feels definitely like they're a tiny, tiny villain
Speaker 2: in a story.
Speaker 3: Do we just know them as villains? Or are ticks
Speaker 3: good for anything?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean in the general you know ecosystem, the
Speaker 4: ticks will service food sources for you know, other organisms
Speaker 4: like birds will eat them for example. But if you're
Speaker 4: asking me, you know, would our world be okay if
Speaker 4: we eradicated all the tics? You know, I don't know
Speaker 4: the answer to that. I personally really admire ticks very much.
Speaker 4: Of course, I don't want people to become sick, but
Speaker 4: I think they're really if you if you learn a
Speaker 4: little bit about them, you could kind of admire how
Speaker 4: they've evolved to be pretty sneaky and although they are
Speaker 4: the villain, like, you know, they do a really good
Speaker 4: job at it.
Speaker 2: What are some of the things that you admire about
Speaker 2: ticks and how they go about doing their business?
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, in the tick that I primarily study is
Speaker 4: the black legged tick, and many people call that the
Speaker 4: deer tick. And it is a very like hardy animal, right,
Speaker 4: so it can survive, you know, in temperate regions of
Speaker 4: the United States and the Northeast, in the Upper Midwest,
Speaker 4: and so it can sustain very cold temperatures like it
Speaker 4: can live in you know, Minnesota and Wisconsin where it's
Speaker 4: very cold. It can live for a long time under
Speaker 4: the snow. It lives for a long time. This particular
Speaker 4: tick has a two year life cycle.
Speaker 3: Two years.
Speaker 2: Granted I have refrigerator mustard older than that, but still
Speaker 2: that's twenty four of your periods. That's two hanukkahs. That's
Speaker 2: a longer lifespan than some pairs of shoes or the
Speaker 2: span of getting.
Speaker 3: A master's degree.
Speaker 2: So just think you could meet someone, fall in love,
Speaker 2: move in together, fall out of love, break up, and
Speaker 2: maybe be over it, and there's still a tick out
Speaker 2: there that was on the planet for all of it.
Speaker 2: That was sadder than I intended, but whatever.
Speaker 4: It's kind of hard to kill this tick. And on
Speaker 4: top of that, when it is when we think of
Speaker 4: it as a parasite, as something that you know, requires
Speaker 4: a host in order to carry out its life cycle,
Speaker 4: it really has a you know, evolved to have these
Speaker 4: features that makes it go, you know, undetected. So this
Speaker 4: tick in particular, and many tick species will feed for
Speaker 4: several days on a host. And so if you think
Speaker 4: about a mosquito, you know, it lands, it takes a
Speaker 4: quick blood meal, and by the time you realize it's there,
Speaker 4: you know you've swatted it away. And so you know,
Speaker 4: when a tick has to feed on a host for
Speaker 4: several days, it doesn't want to be detected, right, So
Speaker 4: it has this saliva that is full of all sorts
Speaker 4: of components that can fight the host immune system, so
Speaker 4: you don't typically when you're being a host for a tick,
Speaker 4: you may not feel it. You won't feel itchy, you
Speaker 4: don't feel paid, because it has in its and it's saliva,
Speaker 4: It has alvasodilators, it has anti coagulation factors, it's got
Speaker 4: these substances that really can protect it. And also it
Speaker 4: keeps your blood from plotting, and so you can it
Speaker 4: can just start pulling in that blood very effectively.
Speaker 2: Okay, so just a little aside on why they are tiny,
Speaker 2: creepy vampires. So many tick species need a blood meal
Speaker 2: to get to its next life stage, kind of like
Speaker 2: a video game leveling up, only they are detecting your breath,
Speaker 2: your odors, and your movement and sometimes crawling on vegetation
Speaker 2: and outstretching their top two legs waiting to hug you.
Speaker 2: This very thirsty behavior is known as questing, and I
Speaker 2: hereby think it should be applied to humans who go
Speaker 2: out looking for a sugar mama, or a money daddy
Speaker 2: or a non binary bucksfuck. That last one could use
Speaker 2: some workshopping any usel, they find some skin, they you
Speaker 2: like a bitch, and then they stick their straw face
Speaker 2: in you, sometimes using cement like saliva to tack it
Speaker 2: down like hot glue on a bad craft project. So
Speaker 2: their saliva might contain a few thousand proteins that do
Speaker 2: everything from and nesthetize you to administer like an anti
Speaker 2: inflammatory so your skin doesn't freak out and tattle that
Speaker 2: you are being used as a blood buffet? Did I
Speaker 2: mention that they can get engorged with your blood two
Speaker 2: hundred to three hundred times their original weight. Can you
Speaker 2: imagine what a boss you'd be if you could hose
Speaker 2: a soup plantation like that for the price of one meal,
Speaker 2: like pay fifteen ninety nine and walk out of there
Speaker 2: weighing four thousand pounds and just set for the winter.
Speaker 3: Ticks do that.
Speaker 2: They don't even pay the price of admission. They sneak
Speaker 2: in the back. Well you blinked, I mean respect.
Speaker 4: So it's it's pretty good. And it's not to say
Speaker 4: all people don't have a reaction to tick bites, because
Speaker 4: some people people have quite a reaction, particularly after they've
Speaker 4: been bitten several times. But the fact that it can
Speaker 4: go on undetected, particularly the adult stage tics that are
Speaker 4: pretty large, It's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of like the stealth bomber of tiny paras,
Speaker 2: totally under the radar. And now you mentioned adults versus
Speaker 2: little guys, and I understand that the nymphs are the size.
Speaker 3: Of a poppy seed.
Speaker 2: Okay, so quick background on this. I mentioned this in
Speaker 2: the epidemiology episode with the Doctor's Aaron of this podcast
Speaker 2: will kill.
Speaker 3: You, Hey, ladies.
Speaker 2: So the CDC to really viscerally, appallingly, delightfully illustrate how
Speaker 2: tiny ticks are, put three little baby tick nymphs on
Speaker 2: a big, like softball sized Costco poppy seed muffin and
Speaker 2: it wasn't until the third confused zoom in that you
Speaker 2: could even see their little leggies. US Americans not always
Speaker 2: fans of truth and consequences. The CDC tod taking it down,
Speaker 2: but I like to burn the image into your brain,
Speaker 2: not to ruin muffins, but to make you just stop
Speaker 2: and think if I had a poppy seed somewhere on
Speaker 2: my body right now, would I even know? And as
Speaker 2: a person who got ranch dressing on her face hours ago,
Speaker 2: I'm going to wager.
Speaker 3: A no here buddies.
Speaker 2: So they're very tiny right now in terms of their
Speaker 2: life cycle. Are a lot of the little guys out
Speaker 2: in the spring?
Speaker 3: Is there a higher risk of tick bites in this
Speaker 3: time of year. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the way that it works is there's three main stages.
Speaker 4: There's the larval stage, which usually feeds on small mammals
Speaker 4: and birds, and then there's the mimph stage, which you
Speaker 4: said is the size of about a poppy seed. And
Speaker 4: actually we put them under the microscope here in the
Speaker 4: lab because we were like, are they really the size
Speaker 4: of a poppy seed? Yeah, and they actually they are
Speaker 4: approximately the size of a poppy seed. But truly, the
Speaker 4: poppy seed is easier to see I see, you know,
Speaker 4: it's a little bit darker than an imp stage black
Speaker 4: legged tick, and and you know, the coloration is more uniform.
Speaker 4: So it really is maybe easier to see a poppy
Speaker 4: scene than to see the nymph stage tick.
Speaker 3: But the tick in its nymph stage.
Speaker 4: In this region the northeastern United States and in the
Speaker 4: Upper Midwest where it's most common, are typically active, most
Speaker 4: active in the spring and early summer months, so we
Speaker 4: really see them start coming out in May and then
Speaker 4: really picking up after Memorial Day, with their activity peaking
Speaker 4: in the early a few weeks of June, and then
Speaker 4: you know, slowly, you know, subsiding as we get into
Speaker 4: the end of July. And it's not to say that
Speaker 4: you couldn't find a nymph during other months of the year.
Speaker 4: You certainly can. We collected some nymphs in October last year.
Speaker 4: But they're most active during the spring and early summer months.
Speaker 2: And is that when most people who get a tickborn
Speaker 2: illness will contract it or does that happen you know,
Speaker 2: pretty much all through the temperate months.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so most cases of lime disease and some of
Speaker 4: the other diseases that are associated with black legged tick
Speaker 4: bites occur you know, during the time or shortly after
Speaker 4: the time when the black legged tick nymph stage is active,
Speaker 4: so spring and summer we see cases into August and September.
Speaker 4: But with that said, the adult stage of tick, which
Speaker 4: is active in the fall and in the spring and
Speaker 4: even in the winter when the weather is above you know, freezing,
Speaker 4: that tick also can transmit infectious agents to humans and
Speaker 4: actually is twice as likely to be infected than the nyphs.
Speaker 3: But the thing about nyphs.
Speaker 4: Is that they're out during the time of year that
Speaker 4: more people tend to be recreating outside. And also they're
Speaker 4: very tiny, and the adults are a little bit easier
Speaker 4: to spot. So yeah, it's kind of just you know,
Speaker 4: it's bad luck for us, but good luck for the
Speaker 4: tick in terms of their timing of activity.
Speaker 2: Okay, so adult ticks bigger and more lime, and disease
Speaker 2: ridden nymphs less lime. But it's more likely you'll find
Speaker 2: one in a crevice in spring because no one is
Speaker 2: out in November picnicking at an outdoor concert series, or
Speaker 2: making out with a tinder date in a park, or
Speaker 2: heading to the woods to cook over a fire, or
Speaker 2: making an appearance in a speedo trying to get that
Speaker 2: D that's sweet, sweet vitamin D. So what about flim flammery?
Speaker 2: Is there any that Nita would just like to take
Speaker 2: to the mat and debunk.
Speaker 4: Yes, thank you for this opportunity. Ticks do not fly,
Speaker 4: they don't jump, they don't hop. Right, So you hear
Speaker 4: a lot of people saying that the ticks are falling
Speaker 4: out of the trees under their heads, and so that
Speaker 4: is unlikely to happen. Well, they're on the vegetation. You
Speaker 4: know when when they're the smaller stages are looking for
Speaker 4: mice and birds and they're kind of low to the ground,
Speaker 4: and then the adult stages are looking for deer, and
Speaker 4: they tend to crawl up a little higher on the
Speaker 4: vegetation to find a deer, and then they'll crawl upward
Speaker 4: on people until they find a good spot. So if
Speaker 4: you find a tick on your head, it probably found
Speaker 4: you somewhere lower on your body and crawled up and
Speaker 4: it didn't fall out of a tree. So that is
Speaker 4: something that I think is often misunderstood. I've got and
Speaker 4: I think that's the big one.
Speaker 3: And that and that and leaving the head end.
Speaker 4: We don't really leave the whole head in, just the
Speaker 4: feeding tube when you remove a tick, and and I
Speaker 4: think just getting removing it is the most important thing.
Speaker 4: So even if you leave a little piece of the
Speaker 4: mouth parents better than leaving the tick attached.
Speaker 3: Right do you ever look at doctor pimple Popper?
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, it's funny you mention that, because I
Speaker 4: actually don't really watch TV. And recently we had a
Speaker 4: friend over and it was late in the night and
Speaker 4: they decided to show us this and it was really something.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's disgusting.
Speaker 2: There was this one little video she posted where she's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I was treating a patient dermatology patient and his girlfriend
Speaker 2: was like, hey, can you.
Speaker 3: Check out this growth I've got.
Speaker 2: We had it for a couple of days and she
Speaker 2: looked at it was like a fully engorged doc tick,
Speaker 2: just floopy flopping off of her abdomen. And doctor pimple
Speaker 2: Popper was like, yeah, that's a tick. But I guess
Speaker 2: you just thought it was a new mole.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: I know. Well so that so that surprises me a
Speaker 4: little bit, just because you know, adult tics, particularly dog ticks,
Speaker 4: are quite big, and particularly when they're in gorge. I
Speaker 4: mean think of like a raisinet. That's really what they
Speaker 4: look like to me. Yeah, sorry if I ruined raisinetes
Speaker 4: for you forever, but I you know they do. That's
Speaker 4: if you put an in gorged female deer tick next
Speaker 4: to a raisinet, they're almost hard to tell apart and
Speaker 4: I and I that's how big it is. If you
Speaker 4: had one of those hanging off your ear abdomen, I
Speaker 4: think that would be at least for me, would be alarming.
Speaker 4: See the head right there, and this is the body
Speaker 4: here with the feet, so we need.
Speaker 3: To try to pick it up.
Speaker 4: Sorry my hurting you.
Speaker 3: God, that thing was on tight.
Speaker 4: But you know, with nymphs, even when they're engorged with blood,
Speaker 4: you know, they're still very small and and so I
Speaker 4: think that, you know, not being able to detect one
Speaker 4: or no or just think it's like a sleck of
Speaker 4: dirt is very common.
Speaker 2: I do love the CDC poppy seed muffin comparison.
Speaker 3: That was great. I was so bummed when they had
Speaker 3: to take it down. People were grossed out.
Speaker 4: You know, it's see.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 4: I also think that that was great and very effective,
Speaker 4: and I know it maybe ruined poppy seed muffins for
Speaker 4: some people, but I thought it really just drives home
Speaker 4: the point and the visual of like, this is what
Speaker 4: you're looking for. So so maybe we can bring back
Speaker 4: the poppy seed muffins.
Speaker 2: It's better to be grossed out for thirty seconds on
Speaker 2: Twitter by a poppy seed muffin than to be, you know,
Speaker 2: putting yourself at risk. What's the best way to not
Speaker 2: get bitten by one? Is it repellent? Is it wearing
Speaker 2: just a wet suit?
Speaker 4: I'm one suit of armor. Yeah, so unfortunately, in you know,
Speaker 4: the forty years since lime disease was first described, you
Speaker 4: know here in the state of Connecticut, we you know,
Speaker 4: haven't really done a super job at getting people to
Speaker 4: prevent disease. In fact, a number of cases in the
Speaker 4: nation has been growing rather than rather than subsiding. But
Speaker 4: what we we do know from from many research studies
Speaker 4: is that there are some things that may be protective
Speaker 4: against lime disease specifically. So, for example, we know that
Speaker 4: in a couple of studies, performing bodily tick checks frequently
Speaker 4: can be protective against lime disease. So that is inspecting
Speaker 4: your body, and that includes your entire body, so particularly
Speaker 4: the cracks and the crevices and the you know arm
Speaker 4: becausey yeah, well right, so because a tick will crawl
Speaker 4: up right, so it'll crawl, it'll find its host. It'll
Speaker 4: be waiting on the vegetation for a host to walk by,
Speaker 4: and so it may you may encounter it at your leg,
Speaker 4: but if there's no skin showing there, it will keep
Speaker 4: walking up until it finds some skin. So that might
Speaker 4: mean it will crawl under your shirt and into your
Speaker 4: arm pit or up into your hair behind ears. We
Speaker 4: find a lot of them at places that are constricted
Speaker 4: by say a bra strap or underwear wiste bands, those
Speaker 4: kinds of things. And so performing a tick check is
Speaker 4: a good idea, and actually performing when daily is a
Speaker 4: great idea. Because the lime causing tick, the black legod tich,
Speaker 4: is unlikely to transmit the bacteria that causes lime if
Speaker 4: it's been attached less than twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so this is amazing news. There's a magical window,
Speaker 2: an almost biological grace period in which you are less
Speaker 2: likely to have one of these tiny bastards drool a
Speaker 2: disease into your blood. So take a moment to just
Speaker 2: feel yourself all around. Get comfy with a hand mirror. Also,
Speaker 2: you can do this one thing that people on the
Speaker 2: bus might appreciate as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the other thing you can do, and there's a
Speaker 4: couple of studies that support this, is take a bath
Speaker 4: or shower shortly after coming in from being outside. So
Speaker 4: that could work in a couple of ways. So you
Speaker 4: could be washing off ticks that haven't yet attached. If
Speaker 4: the tick is attached, you know it's not going to
Speaker 4: wash off. Unfortunately, it will stay there. The water will
Speaker 4: not do anything to deter it, but if you haven't
Speaker 4: hasn't attached, you could maybe wash it off. You're also
Speaker 4: removing the clothes that you're wearing. They may have ticks
Speaker 4: crawling upon them. And another thing you can do, and
Speaker 4: this is all this sort of personal protective measures you
Speaker 4: can take. You can take your clothing after you've been
Speaker 4: outside and put it right in the dryer. There was
Speaker 4: a study that showed that if you put the clothes
Speaker 4: directly into the dryer and dry them on high heat
Speaker 4: for ten minutes, that should kill the ticks that are
Speaker 4: crawling upon them.
Speaker 2: What do you do when you're out in field season
Speaker 2: and your job is literally to get yourself close to
Speaker 2: like a tick bomb and just drag layers of cloth
Speaker 2: through tick infested weeds? Like what do researchers do? Do
Speaker 2: you just cover yourselves in?
Speaker 3: Like? Dat what happened?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Well so in my case, my goal is to
Speaker 4: get as many ticks as possible, so I don't cover
Speaker 4: my self indeed at all. In fact, in you know,
Speaker 4: when I'm sampling for adult tics, I find that I'm
Speaker 4: more effective using my body as a method to collect
Speaker 4: ticks than to use a flannel tick drag or a flag,
Speaker 4: which is what we use typically to collect nymph stage ticks,
Speaker 4: and so you know our field staff, I of course
Speaker 4: want to keep everyone very safe. They wear long sleeve
Speaker 4: white coveralls that zip up to the neck. They tuck
Speaker 4: their pants in long white socks, and depending on the
Speaker 4: study that we're doing, oftentimes we have those coveralls. They
Speaker 4: are treated with products that contains permethrin, which is a
Speaker 4: access a pesticide and also a repellent which we know
Speaker 4: is very effective at repelling and killing ticks or knocking
Speaker 4: them down. And so you actually can buy this stuff
Speaker 4: to put on your own clothing, and it's great because
Speaker 4: it lasts through many washings. So it's a it's called permethrin,
Speaker 4: and you can either buy a retail clothing item that
Speaker 4: is already factory impregnated with permethrine, or you can buy
Speaker 4: the spray. Usually you can find it at camping and
Speaker 4: hiking retailers.
Speaker 2: Okay, side note. I know all about this chemical because
Speaker 2: I was covered in a constellation of red itchy bumps
Speaker 2: in Hawaii last November, and I spent most of my
Speaker 2: time in Paradise convinced I had scabies and rubbing this
Speaker 2: formula on me just in case turns out it wasn't scabies,
Speaker 2: just mosquitoes. But now I have half a tube of
Speaker 2: this in my medicine cabinet, and I just hope no
Speaker 2: one discovers and googles it. I feel like we're closer
Speaker 2: now that I've shared. Anyway, It's a synthetic form of
Speaker 2: compounds found in chrysanthemums, and it acts by disrupting nerve
Speaker 2: cell membranes, causing paralysis and death of some ticks and
Speaker 2: mites and other bugs. You can also just miss it
Speaker 2: on your cargo shorts and not on your actual body,
Speaker 2: but rubbing some fresh mums down your pants likely will not.
Speaker 3: Do the trick.
Speaker 2: It also wouldn't hurt if you wanted to, and you
Speaker 2: can spray.
Speaker 4: Say you have gardening clothes or clothes you do yard
Speaker 4: work in, you can spray that, and those could be
Speaker 4: the clothes you wear outside. But typically we don't, you know,
Speaker 4: we don't we want the tics, so we just are
Speaker 4: you know, have eagle eyes. We check one another after
Speaker 4: being at each field site, and we do it that way.
Speaker 4: But for my children, you know, I have two kids,
Speaker 4: and everybody knows that TIC checking is part of our
Speaker 4: daily routine. Sometimes multiple tic checks a day and taking
Speaker 4: a bath or shower, particularly this time of year, everybody
Speaker 4: bathes daily, and I highly recommend that that's not you know,
Speaker 4: there's all sorts of landscaping things that you can do
Speaker 4: in your backyard, but you know, taking a bath or
Speaker 4: shower is really you know, it doesn't cost a lot.
Speaker 4: We like it when people bathe. It's not controversial. It's
Speaker 4: easy to do.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: It depends on if you're depressed, but yes, that should
Speaker 2: be easy.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay. Have you ever gotten bitten by a tick?
Speaker 4: Oh? Sure, absolutely, I've been bitten many times by ticks
Speaker 4: over the years, and it's a I think a hazard
Speaker 4: of the occupation.
Speaker 2: And now you obviously you study lime disease, which is
Speaker 2: such a huge.
Speaker 3: Issue right now.
Speaker 2: Have you ever worried that you have contracted lime disease
Speaker 2: or what are your personal feelings about it?
Speaker 4: Oh? Well, certainly lime disease is a very important human disease,
Speaker 4: and everyone should who lives in an area where these
Speaker 4: ticks are prevalent should be aware and really try to
Speaker 4: prevent it. Now for myself, so, I don't know if
Speaker 4: you call this lucky or unlucky. I've had in my life.
Speaker 4: I've always been extremely sensitive to the bites of many
Speaker 4: different kinds of arthropods, so I have a severe allergy
Speaker 4: to many types of stinging bees, fire ants, I can mosquitos.
Speaker 4: I have very poor reaction. And so even with tics,
Speaker 4: when they I think as soon as they attach and
Speaker 4: start to salivate, which they do to anchor themselves into
Speaker 4: the skin, before they even start to take blood, I
Speaker 4: will get quite a large reaction to these organisms, and
Speaker 4: I'll be able to detect it and remove it.
Speaker 2: Okay, a quick rundown of what is in the ticks
Speaker 2: tool kit, and by that I mean they're a live face.
Speaker 2: So they have two palps, which are parts of their mouth,
Speaker 2: like little tough mustaches, and they have callisceri which cut
Speaker 2: through their host's skin. And then of course they have
Speaker 2: that one barbed needle like hypostome, kind of like a
Speaker 2: cross between a boba straw and Satan's tiny pitchfork. But
Speaker 2: Nita isn't a frequent victim, thankfully.
Speaker 4: So I've never had a tick feed particularly long on me. Actually,
Speaker 4: I'm not sure a tick is ever, you know, taken
Speaker 4: a blood meal, at least not a black legged tick.
Speaker 4: I did once find a dog tick in my hair
Speaker 4: that might have been there for a day. And the
Speaker 4: dog tick carries you can transmit Rocky Mountain spotted fever,
Speaker 4: but not lime disease, and Rocky Mountains spotted fever is
Speaker 4: much more rare, and it was okay, but yeah, it's
Speaker 4: something we take very seriously because this tick that we
Speaker 4: study can carry not just one but actually five recognize
Speaker 4: tickborn illnesses. It's full of all sorts of different microorganisms
Speaker 4: that who knows, you know, may turn out to have
Speaker 4: some sort of human disease causing capability. And so all
Speaker 4: of our you know, seasonal staff and anyone who's working
Speaker 4: in tick research, we are very careful about being safe
Speaker 4: and protecting ourselves.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're all crossing our fingers. I made this a
Speaker 2: last minute, opportunistic two parter with a disease ecologist, but
Speaker 2: just to wet your infectious barbed whistle, here are some
Speaker 2: other things ticks can spit into you and a plasmosis, babiosis,
Speaker 2: bore Yella, bourbon virus, Colorado tick fever, er lichiosis, Heartland virus,
Speaker 2: lime disease, Poacan disease, ricketsiosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Southern
Speaker 2: tick associated rash illness, tickborn relapsing fever to laramia, some
Speaker 2: robot sounding thing called thirty six for d ricketsiosis ticks.
Speaker 2: I know it's not your fault. You just got caught
Speaker 2: up in a bad disease racket, but dang, you are
Speaker 2: not welcome in my bot crack. So let's lightly touch
Speaker 2: on a few though. Let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: the diseases in particular. You mentioned that you study five,
Speaker 2: but is the one that's at the forefront the most
Speaker 2: lime disease just because of its prevalence right now?
Speaker 4: Oh, absolutely so. Lime disease is the number one reported
Speaker 4: vector borne disease in the country. So cases are reported
Speaker 4: by doctors and laboratories to state health departments, who then
Speaker 4: report them to the CDC, and the CDC counts them,
Speaker 4: and so each year there's about thirty thousand cases. But
Speaker 4: a couple of studies have estimated that that's very well underreported,
Speaker 4: and that there was a study well twenty fourteen, twenty fourteen,
Speaker 4: I think it's estimated that the true number of cases
Speaker 4: is probably about ten times that, maybe three hundred thousand
Speaker 4: cases per year in its early stages. If caught or
Speaker 4: most people will be treated and be okay. But in
Speaker 4: its late stages, or in some percentage of the population,
Speaker 4: even after treatment, they will have persistent symptoms or symptoms
Speaker 4: that go away and come back. And so those late
Speaker 4: stage complications of lime disease can be very serious. It
Speaker 4: can involve severe arthritis and neurological involvement, PARTI ACT complication,
Speaker 4: facial paralysis, many types of things.
Speaker 2: And now with lime disease, can you tell me a
Speaker 2: little bit about what are some of the symptoms of
Speaker 2: it and is there a difference between late stage and
Speaker 2: chronic lime?
Speaker 3: What are we looking for?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'm not a medical doctor, but I can
Speaker 4: tell you that in its earliest stages, lime disease can
Speaker 4: present itself in a very vague way, kind of flu
Speaker 4: like symptoms and fever and malaise and you know, feeling
Speaker 4: generally terrible. So unfortunately, sometimes it goes undiagnosed. The telltale
Speaker 4: early symptom of lime disease is what we call many
Speaker 4: people call it a bullseye rash or an EM which
Speaker 4: stands for your thema migrants rash. And this is a
Speaker 4: red rash that will appear usually at the bite site,
Speaker 4: but sometimes some area away from the bite site and
Speaker 4: there may be multiple ones of them, and they they
Speaker 4: are typically painless, and so they can go undetected and
Speaker 4: they expand and expands over a period of days or
Speaker 4: weeks and then it will disappear. And so you can
Speaker 4: imagine if you were bitten behind the knee, you may
Speaker 4: not see any rash that appears.
Speaker 2: If you need a visual this rash looks like if
Speaker 2: the target logo got a little sloppy drunk and manifested
Speaker 2: itself on your skin, as if by a ghostly possession.
Speaker 4: Not to be dramatic, and so well, it's believed most
Speaker 4: people who do get infected with lime do get a rash.
Speaker 4: Not everybody does, or it may go undetected again because
Speaker 4: it's not painful or itchy and so, but that sign
Speaker 4: occurs between three and thirty days after infection. If you
Speaker 4: can catch that symptom, which is a very classic clinical
Speaker 4: symptom of lime disease, you know, that's like one of
Speaker 4: the earliest symptoms and so you can treat it well
Speaker 4: and it's later stage. We're talking about things like I
Speaker 4: mentioned before, in a severe arthritis. There are cases of limecarditis,
Speaker 4: which is a heart infection. Other neurological issues, and it
Speaker 4: really can run the gamut.
Speaker 2: And when it comes to having lime disease that might
Speaker 2: be resolved with an antibiotic versus late stage lime or
Speaker 2: maybe what some people call chronic lime, how do you
Speaker 2: differentiate and how do you also feel about some people
Speaker 2: saying one doesn't exist or I guess it's funny that
Speaker 2: lime has such controversy around it.
Speaker 3: By funny, I mean weird and scary.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And you know, again, like the way
Speaker 4: that we are this from the science that we do
Speaker 4: is well, first of all, I'm not a medical doctor.
Speaker 4: I'm a tip doctor. I guess you could say, and
Speaker 4: it's definitely true that there's a lot of people who
Speaker 4: are very ill. And whether it's lime alone, or it's
Speaker 4: lime plus some other coinfection, or it's some other tick
Speaker 4: born illness, or it's some other illness, you know, I
Speaker 4: can't say, but I know that there's a lot of
Speaker 4: people who are very very ill from tick born illnesses
Speaker 4: and in particular lime disease. And so the place that
Speaker 4: I come from and the work that we do in
Speaker 4: our lab is really focused on prevention and understanding tick
Speaker 4: behavior and also human behavior, so that we can we
Speaker 4: can prevent lime disease, whether it's early stage or late
Speaker 4: stage or post treatment lime disease, or chronic lime disease.
Speaker 4: You know, if we can do better at prevention science
Speaker 4: and being able to convince people to do prevention well
Speaker 4: before they have an experience with illness, then really hopefully,
Speaker 4: you know, we can stop having conversations or have fewer
Speaker 4: conversations about how sick everybody is, and really start having
Speaker 4: conversations about how how well we're doing it keeping people
Speaker 4: from getting sick.
Speaker 3: Right? Are there any documentaries that you like or would
Speaker 3: recommend on the topic. Are there any that you're like
Speaker 3: usage tic doctor?
Speaker 4: I don't. I don't, and it's probably only because I am.
Speaker 4: I haven't had a lot of time to spend watching them,
Speaker 4: so I don't know. I mean, I did see one
Speaker 4: documentary and I think it was called Under Our Skin
Speaker 4: or Under Your Skin, and it was very emotionally provoking.
Speaker 4: I think that it really was moving, really pointed to
Speaker 4: the problem of people who are sick with lime disease.
Speaker 2: The trailer of this is pretty chilling.
Speaker 4: We have, I think, horrible epidemic.
Speaker 2: And again NITA studies how to prevent the tick born diseases,
Speaker 2: not how to treat them.
Speaker 4: But I also think that there's been a lot of
Speaker 4: scientists who have been studying this topic for a long time,
Speaker 4: and so sometimes those scientists have become, you know, enemies
Speaker 4: of the public, and I just I want everyone to
Speaker 4: get along. I try not to watch that stuff because
Speaker 4: I want I know that me personally, like, this is
Speaker 4: my life and my career, and I really feel strongly
Speaker 4: about wanting to do a good job and researching my
Speaker 4: field of study.
Speaker 2: Obviously, lyme disease is a very charged topic, so charged
Speaker 2: in fact that.
Speaker 4: But we made some videos recently, so maybe I can
Speaker 4: tell you about those if you have. We said there's
Speaker 4: a lot of I wouldn't say controversy, I'd say questions
Speaker 4: and confusion about how people can use pesticides in their
Speaker 4: backyards to reduce the tech populations in their backyards. We
Speaker 4: get a lot of questions about that. And so recently
Speaker 4: the Environmental Protection Agency awarded US a grant to try
Speaker 4: and tackle the science communication issue regarding you safe but
Speaker 4: also judicious and effective pest societies for controlling techs and
Speaker 4: because unfortunately there's a lot of stuff out there on
Speaker 4: the market and there's all sorts of rules and regulations
Speaker 4: about how things can or don't have to be labeled
Speaker 4: and what you can say about how effective they are,
Speaker 4: and so it leads to a lot of confusion, and
Speaker 4: we think, you know, people either over apply stuff or
Speaker 4: they apply stuff that doesn't work, but they feel like
Speaker 4: they're safe. And so we made these, you know, story
Speaker 4: based videos.
Speaker 2: Nita says that she's trying to communicate this science in
Speaker 2: a way that's conversational, kind of like two neighbors just
Speaker 2: yacking about precautions and sharing good advice about the black
Speaker 2: legged tick, which is a super hearty mothersucker. Anyway, go
Speaker 2: to spraysafeplaysafe dot org against spray safe playsafe dot org
Speaker 2: and you will find Nita's videos and a wealth of
Speaker 2: information on how to deal with these little backyard pests.
Speaker 2: There's also different types of control methods discussed, everything from
Speaker 2: essential oils to fungus based ones to synthetic chrysanthemum juice
Speaker 2: which is not the scientific term for it, but for me,
Speaker 2: roids is hard to say and I already watched achar acroology. Yes,
Speaker 2: spray safe, play safe has you so covered in safe
Speaker 2: and effective pesticides.
Speaker 4: And so We just want to make sure that if people,
Speaker 4: you know, it's the decision to use a pesticide is
Speaker 4: totally a personal one and you know, whether you want
Speaker 4: to use it or not is up to you. But
Speaker 4: if you're going to use it, we want you to
Speaker 4: be armed with all the information to make informed choices.
Speaker 3: So it's not just like throw a grenade in the backyard.
Speaker 4: No, but you know, I've been places where people have
Speaker 4: said they're going to like pave over the whole backyard,
Speaker 4: which is really sad to me. Or they say, you know,
Speaker 4: my rule to the children is don't touch anything green outside, right,
Speaker 4: I know, And I'm like, is that what it's coming to?
Speaker 4: I think that, you know, we really want people to
Speaker 4: be aware but not afraid, because I think just you know,
Speaker 4: arming yourself with knowledge is really important in terms of
Speaker 4: being able to keep yourself safe.
Speaker 2: Well, what about these pick populations seeming to go up
Speaker 2: or lime disease spreading? I know, I've looked at maps
Speaker 2: from the CDC that have shown where lime disease essentially
Speaker 2: was first kind of identified, which you know, old lime Connecticut,
Speaker 2: and then having it seeing it kind of like bleed out.
Speaker 2: So to see these maps go to the CDC website
Speaker 2: and you can type in historical data. I'll also link
Speaker 2: this in the show notes and on my website, so
Speaker 2: clicking year by year, it's kind of like seeing blue
Speaker 2: dots hemorrhaging like ink. And in twenty seventeen, the only
Speaker 2: states which did not have reported cases on lime disease
Speaker 2: were Oklahoma and Hawaii. And I asked Nita about where
Speaker 2: are these black legged ticks hanging out? Are they moving
Speaker 2: out of the Northeast, Are they like aging hipsters going
Speaker 2: to the suburbs. I understand that a lot of folk sinkets,
Speaker 2: maybe just in the Northeast, but it's been identified in
Speaker 2: ticks in all the continental US, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the black legged ticks species is you know,
Speaker 4: fairly spread in many places of the US. Besides the
Speaker 4: Northeast and the upper Midwest. We have this same species,
Speaker 4: you know, down all the way in Florida and Texas
Speaker 4: as well, and in the states in between. The ecology
Speaker 4: of the tick is a little bit different, and so
Speaker 4: even though we do see the tick, we see less disease.
Speaker 4: And I think up here in the Northeast, in this
Speaker 4: part of the country, we have sort of this perfect
Speaker 4: storm of transmission, and it has to do with how
Speaker 4: the ticks behave and how the host behave. We have
Speaker 4: this issue of climate change as well, which really I
Speaker 4: think is going to make the tick situation a lot trickier.
Speaker 4: And really it is changing even more than you've seen
Speaker 4: it in those maps, because the tich range has been spreading,
Speaker 4: you know, northward and westward, and so we commonly now
Speaker 4: see black legged ticks up in Canada, and so cases
Speaker 4: of lime disease are more frequently reported in Canada. Now.
Speaker 2: One thing I don't recommend looking at unless you like
Speaker 2: to be very grossed out, appalled and sad for a
Speaker 2: moose is a photo of mooses covered in ticks to
Speaker 2: the point where they look like they're doused in pebbled
Speaker 2: concrete or like the underside of a boat that's been barnacled.
Speaker 2: I want to help the moose so badly, even though
Speaker 2: given that I am untrained and helping moose with ticks,
Speaker 2: it would probably like to kick me in the face.
Speaker 2: Nita says that we have other tick species that are
Speaker 2: also encroaching tick, for example, the lone star tick, which
Speaker 2: sounds like the town asshole walking through saloon doors to
Speaker 2: suck your blood and leave you with an infectious souvenir.
Speaker 2: So their range is in the East, Southeast, and Midwest
Speaker 2: United States. A NITA says, in recent years they've been
Speaker 2: detecting them more and more, which means they're coming for
Speaker 2: us pointing mouth suckers drawn.
Speaker 4: And this tick is really important because you know, it
Speaker 4: also can carry different disease causing agents, different than lime disease.
Speaker 4: And also it's been implicated in causing a severe red
Speaker 4: meat allergy and we're talking like yanophylactic red meat allergy.
Speaker 4: And the thing about that loan Star tick is like
Speaker 4: it is a seriously aggressive humanviter. And so it's different
Speaker 4: than these dear ticks who just kind of hang out
Speaker 4: and wait for you to walk by and they'll grab hold.
Speaker 4: The loan Star tick will detect you from far away
Speaker 4: and we'll come after you. Yeah, And so I think
Speaker 4: that you know, talk about you know, you think mosquitos
Speaker 4: are a nuisance. I think you know, nothing would ruin
Speaker 4: a technical and a bunch of loan Star ticks coming
Speaker 4: along and you know, wanting to grab hold and just do.
Speaker 2: Not under any circumstances. Imagine a wave of lone star
Speaker 2: tics cresting and crashing into your wine and cheese basket,
Speaker 2: aimed at your warm crevices.
Speaker 3: Don't imagine it. Don't imagine it, don't do it.
Speaker 4: In addition, you may have heard that there was a
Speaker 4: new tick in town, an invasive tick species. I don't
Speaker 4: know if you've heard this, but there's so yes. So
Speaker 4: a couple of years ago, a sheep farmer in New
Speaker 4: Jersey was covered in these tiny little ticks and she
Speaker 4: went to the health department and they were like, take
Speaker 4: off your pants because they're everywhere, and they put her
Speaker 4: pants on the freezer. And it turns out this tick
Speaker 4: is a tick that had previously not been established in
Speaker 4: the United States, and it's known as the Asian longhorn tick.
Speaker 2: So, according to the CDC, as of May twenty eighth,
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, which was like one second ago, longhorned ticks
Speaker 2: have been found in Arkansas, Connecticut, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina,
Speaker 2: New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia,
Speaker 2: and researchers are looking to see where else it's gone.
Speaker 2: So Google image search them and be aware. They're kind
Speaker 2: of like a reddish brown color with what appears like
Speaker 2: long legs and they can be up to the size
Speaker 2: of a pee fully engorged. Why are we freaking out
Speaker 2: about them?
Speaker 4: And so this tick in Asia is a serious vector
Speaker 4: of human disease. It carries a virus. It can also
Speaker 4: cause a rock like a rocky mountain sort of spotted
Speaker 4: fever type illness. And then it's a serious test of livestock.
Speaker 4: And so it's it's now established itself here in New
Speaker 4: Jersey and Staten Island and parts of Westchester County, New York.
Speaker 4: And this tick is really scary because it can reproduce
Speaker 4: bi parthenogenesis. So what that means is the female she
Speaker 4: can she doesn't need a male mate to reproduce. So
Speaker 4: one female can create, you know, a thousand or more babies,
Speaker 4: just essentially cloning herself. And so we really are watching
Speaker 4: watching this tick and what it's going to do, and
Speaker 4: we're you know, right in sort of the center of
Speaker 4: where it has now become established. So we're really in
Speaker 4: a place of sort of I think in this region
Speaker 4: around New York City and heading northward, this sort of
Speaker 4: tick apocalypse, I guess you could say, where a lot
Speaker 4: is going on. And so I think we have a lot,
Speaker 4: you know, to learn, and then we're going to be
Speaker 4: seeing a lot of changes in terms of what the
Speaker 4: ticks are doing in the next decade.
Speaker 3: This is terrifying. Also, one question why why why why.
Speaker 2: Is it that there are more ticks, or that there
Speaker 2: are more deer, or that there are more like whitefooted mice,
Speaker 2: that there's more development so there's less land, so they're
Speaker 2: more concentrated.
Speaker 3: Like why is it such a boom town for ticks?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, so part of it is like if you
Speaker 4: think about what the landscape looks like. So the ticks
Speaker 4: have been around a long time, but if you think
Speaker 4: about what this part of the country looked like, you know,
Speaker 4: in the year nineteen hundred, it was primarily an agricultural place. Right,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of farmland and pasture land in the
Speaker 4: deforestation and you know, to make these grazing areas and
Speaker 4: so oh, the white tailed deer we're not so you know, abundant.
Speaker 4: As we've sort of you know, reforested this part of
Speaker 4: the country, we've really led to an abundance of white
Speaker 4: tailed deer. And so we know that there's a link
Speaker 4: between the abundance of ticks and the abundance of deer,
Speaker 4: because deer are the primary reproductive host for the ticks.
Speaker 4: So the more deer, there's more opportunity for the adult
Speaker 4: ticks to reproduce. And so the other thing that's happened
Speaker 4: is that we really have started to move into these
Speaker 4: forested landscapes so and in doing so, we fragmented those landscapes,
Speaker 4: and so we've sort of made all these little cuts
Speaker 4: into the forest. So we're living sort of right in
Speaker 4: the habitat where the ticks live and the deer live.
Speaker 4: And on top of that, by fragmenting the forest, we
Speaker 4: create a lot of edge habitat, and edge habitats are
Speaker 4: really really great for you know, deer love them, mice
Speaker 4: love them. We find a lot of ticks right in
Speaker 4: the edge. And so the riskiest place really for encountering
Speaker 4: a tick in this part of the country is really
Speaker 4: in one's own backyard, particularly in that region the echo
Speaker 4: tone we call it, you know, and right where that
Speaker 4: place where the lawn is meeting woods is really your
Speaker 4: riskiest spot. But yeah, it's kind of all of the above.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a lot of deer, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of ticks, and there's a lot of people living close
Speaker 4: to them.
Speaker 2: How do you feel about the conspiracy theories about lime
Speaker 2: disease having started in Plum Island as biowarfare and then
Speaker 2: spreading from there.
Speaker 3: Uh, no comment.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's likely. You know, it's so complicated.
Speaker 4: Like if I were going to make a I'm not.
Speaker 4: I don't want to. But if I were to think
Speaker 4: about what would make a good bio terrorist agent or
Speaker 4: bio warfare agent, I don't think I would want to
Speaker 4: choose a tick that needs all these things right, It
Speaker 4: needs to has a two year life cycle, it only
Speaker 4: feeds three times in its life, and you know it
Speaker 4: needs all these different hosts. It just seems too unlikely
Speaker 4: to me personally.
Speaker 3: That was the dumbest question ever.
Speaker 2: But I just wanted to know, like, oh no, we've
Speaker 2: figured out that that's completely legit.
Speaker 4: Oh no, yeah no, And as far as I know,
Speaker 4: it's not legit, and I you know, I just seems unlikely.
Speaker 4: I when you think about some of the biowarfare agents,
Speaker 4: like tularimias. One tularimia can be transmitted you know, by
Speaker 4: a tick, but it also has can be transmitted in
Speaker 4: other ways. And so I think, like, you know, having
Speaker 4: only one way to transmit it, or something that doesn't
Speaker 4: persist in the environment very long without a lot of
Speaker 4: other factors, and and something that you know people are
Speaker 4: always going to encounter. It just doesn't seem like the
Speaker 4: you know way, especially because I mean with all different
Speaker 4: diseases out there, you know, if you want a biowarfare agent,
Speaker 4: would want to cause a lot of death, I would think, right, So,
Speaker 4: so I think lime can be very serious and even
Speaker 4: fatal in some cases, but it's not causing a high
Speaker 4: degree of mortality.
Speaker 2: That's funny that to think that someone would come up
Speaker 2: with a by a warfare scheme and their boss would be.
Speaker 3: Like, sorry, just not fatal enough. Yeah, keep working on this.
Speaker 4: Well really, I mean yeah, I mean I think to
Speaker 4: be a good bioweapon you really have to think about
Speaker 4: those things. And I don't want to think about those things.
Speaker 4: But when I think about lime disease being bio terrorist agent,
Speaker 4: I think it just seems not terribly plausible to me personally.
Speaker 3: That makes me feel a little better. Yeah, we're a
Speaker 3: lot under a.
Speaker 4: Touch, Yeah, but you know what I mean, that thing
Speaker 4: about underreporting, I mean, for me, I think, like we know,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of cases of lime disease, and we
Speaker 4: know there's a lot of ticks out there, and so
Speaker 4: I just sort of have this attitude that is, you
Speaker 4: know what, if you live in a place where there
Speaker 4: are tics and you go outside, or you have a
Speaker 4: pet that goes outside, you're probably at risk and you
Speaker 4: should take preventive action and percussion and be aware. No
Speaker 4: matter what, and whether they're counting the case or not,
Speaker 4: you can still get sick and your doctor can still
Speaker 4: treat you. And so I think counting cases and things
Speaker 4: may be important for some people in terms of trying
Speaker 4: to show the scope of the problem, but in terms
Speaker 4: of keeping yourself safe from being sick. You know, we
Speaker 4: know people get sick, and we know there's a lot
Speaker 4: of ticks and ticks are bad.
Speaker 3: What do you do if you have a pet that's
Speaker 3: out romping?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean I have two Australian shepherds. They're
Speaker 4: awesome and they are my best field assistants. They come
Speaker 4: out with me, and so we do know there are
Speaker 4: some studies that, you know, really kind of point to
Speaker 4: pets that go outdoors as potentially being an additional risk
Speaker 4: factor for getting a bite by a tick. And so
Speaker 4: treating your pets with a tick prevented product is a
Speaker 4: good idea. And you know, treating them all year long,
Speaker 4: not just during spring and summer months, because you know,
Speaker 4: we'll find ticks in December if the temperatures are above
Speaker 4: forty degrees here, and so I, you know, use a
Speaker 4: collar on my dogs. They're you know, it's good for
Speaker 4: eight months. It kills and repels. And there's oral preventatives
Speaker 4: where the dog you know gets a pill or the
Speaker 4: cat you know, gets a pill in the every month
Speaker 4: and then if a tick starts to bite, it will
Speaker 4: it will die before it can feed to completion, and
Speaker 4: so they can work that way. There's these topical spot
Speaker 4: treatments that can work in different ways, either repelling or
Speaker 4: killing on contact or also treating such that the tick
Speaker 4: attaches and then dies while it's feeding. And which is better.
Speaker 4: I don't I can't say, uh, but I think it's
Speaker 4: very important to treat your animals with a tick product
Speaker 4: all year long.
Speaker 2: Better than not having an animal, I guess, or you
Speaker 2: could just get goldfish.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess. So, yeah, I've go knowing about it,
Speaker 4: and I think, you know, when I think about the
Speaker 4: behavior of dogs and cats, and things. You know, depending
Speaker 4: on if you know what you're how you behave with
Speaker 4: your dog, if you take it on a leash, you
Speaker 4: may be able to avoid some of that most ticky habitat.
Speaker 4: But you know, if you have cats that go outside,
Speaker 4: which I've just learned is not its apparently not cool
Speaker 4: to do. I thought everyone's cats just went outside, But
Speaker 4: that's the thing now, and I feel really dumb because
Speaker 4: I didn't know. But I'm learning now.
Speaker 2: Okay, for more on this, listen to the Felinology episode
Speaker 2: with doctor Michael Delgado. So much I did not know
Speaker 2: about cats so much. None of us knew about cats.
Speaker 4: But people do still have cats that go outside. And
Speaker 4: so those cats, you know, will go all over, right,
Speaker 4: they'll go in the woods and I'll be in the
Speaker 4: leafy areas where the ticks are hunkered down when they're
Speaker 4: not looking for a host, and so they can Yeah,
Speaker 4: so they can be exposed in that way. And so
Speaker 4: even if you don't go outside, if your cat does
Speaker 4: and then comes back inside and you're petting it, you know,
Speaker 4: there is a risk for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't know what cats are doing out there.
Speaker 2: They're out honky tonking, They're like later days.
Speaker 3: Man, oh man, But yeah.
Speaker 2: Ornithologists are like, excuse me, yeah, cat's back indoors please,
Speaker 2: So I guess for if for no other reason, then
Speaker 2: so that you don't have to check your butt crack
Speaker 2: for ticks more often, keep your cats inside?
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally, And there's I guess there's a lot of
Speaker 4: reasons now for keeping your for keeping your cats inside.
Speaker 4: I felt really dumb because I didn't know. No. Maybe
Speaker 4: it's because I'm a dog person and I'm not a
Speaker 4: cat person, but I, you know, shout out, I love
Speaker 4: cat people.
Speaker 1: Boy, thank you.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm just learning and I but I do know
Speaker 4: there's a yes for sure these you know, cats can
Speaker 4: pose a risk to to birds, and there's an issue
Speaker 4: with feral cats and potential rabi's transmission and certain parts
Speaker 4: of the country. So yes, PSA, keep your cats and doors.
Speaker 2: I talk to a feelinologist who's like, put it on
Speaker 2: a leash and take it to the park for an hour.
Speaker 3: That's just fine.
Speaker 2: But I have questions from listeners who are super excited
Speaker 2: that you're on, And can I ask you some rapid
Speaker 2: fire questions? Okay, sure, okay, And before we get to
Speaker 2: the lightning round with your questions. A few words about
Speaker 2: sponsors I like very much, who also make this podcast possible.
Speaker 2: But before we get to them, the sponsors also make
Speaker 2: it possible for us to donate to a charity of
Speaker 2: the ologists choosing each week. And Nita enthusiastically supports tickencounter
Speaker 2: dot Org, saying it's a wonderful science based resource for
Speaker 2: all things tick related and it's housed at the University
Speaker 2: of Rhode Island where she worked on her PhD. So
Speaker 2: they do great stuff. They have so many pictures of
Speaker 2: ticks tips. That's tickencounter dot Org. So a donation was
Speaker 2: made to them in her name. Okay, some other things
Speaker 2: I like this week.
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Speaker 3: Back to your questions.
Speaker 2: Okay, so Allison Turry wants to know what is the
Speaker 2: proper method to remove ticks.
Speaker 3: If you get me on, you.
Speaker 4: Great so the proper method would be get the pointiest
Speaker 4: pair of tweezers that you can find, grab the tick
Speaker 4: as close to the skin as you can, and pull
Speaker 4: it perpendicular to the skin and pull up and you know, deliver.
Speaker 4: And so we really don't recommend slathering it with vasoline
Speaker 4: or setting it on fire to get some hairspray, make
Speaker 4: some flamethrowers, or some people put a meat lit match,
Speaker 4: you know, which isn't a great idea, So we don't.
Speaker 4: We want the tick to come out as soon as possible.
Speaker 4: The longer it's attached, the more likely it is to
Speaker 4: transmit things that it's carrying. And we don't really know
Speaker 4: what happens if you like, soak a cotton ball and
Speaker 4: peppermint oil and put it on the tick, does it
Speaker 4: make the tick really pissed off? And then does the
Speaker 4: tick start salivating more and then more likely to transmit
Speaker 4: something we don't know? And so you know, we recommend
Speaker 4: that you just a pointy pair of tweezers pull it
Speaker 4: straight out. And the thing is, with the pointy tweezers
Speaker 4: you can get. The closer you can get, the better
Speaker 4: because you'll hear people say, oh, I left the head
Speaker 4: in which is actually impossible. But what you can leave
Speaker 4: is the feeding tube. It's called a hypostome. It's like
Speaker 4: a straw, but it's barbed like a fish hook, and
Speaker 4: so it's hard to get out, and sometimes that breaks off,
Speaker 4: and that's not the end of the world. To think
Speaker 4: of it as like a splinter. Eventually it'll work its
Speaker 4: way out.
Speaker 2: Also, when a tick is hungry versus in gorge, they
Speaker 2: look so much different, and I did not know that
Speaker 2: until this episode. Full ticks can take on a grayish color.
Speaker 2: They look like a whole different species. So if you
Speaker 2: go to tickencounter dot org, you can see different pictures
Speaker 2: of different stages of feeding. Kind of looks like a
Speaker 2: big gray brain that's about to burst, pretty gnarly. Ruby
Speaker 2: Ostrich wants to know how close are we to a
Speaker 2: human vaccine.
Speaker 4: I know that there is a lot of work in
Speaker 4: the vaccine research field and I don't know the answer
Speaker 4: to that, and I would like to think that we're
Speaker 4: within this decade there will be something. And as you
Speaker 4: may know, there was a vaccine on the market for
Speaker 4: a short period.
Speaker 3: It was removed from the.
Speaker 4: Market, so we'll see it. I think that you know
Speaker 4: the vaccine for lime has a lot of potential. With
Speaker 4: that said, if the same tick that carries lime can
Speaker 4: transmit other, you know, pathogens to humans. Still, prevention measures
Speaker 4: beyond being vaccinated are still really important, like checking your
Speaker 4: body wearing repellent.
Speaker 3: Let's see Raymond J.
Speaker 2: Deutsch wants to know what is it about the area
Speaker 2: of Connecticut that lent itself to the onset of lime disease.
Speaker 2: Do you think is the altitude or climate or soil composition.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, we have a lot of forest of habitat
Speaker 4: with deciduous forest in particular, and so the ticks really
Speaker 4: thrive in under the leaf litter, those dead leaves at
Speaker 4: the base of the forest. And in these forested areas
Speaker 4: we have lots of tick or excuse me, lots of
Speaker 4: white tailed deer, which are the most important host for
Speaker 4: the adult stage of deer ticks. And so we have
Speaker 4: great habitat and the Crysta's forests are full of whitefooted
Speaker 4: mice and other small mammals that can be great hosts
Speaker 4: for our ticks. And I think the other piece of
Speaker 4: it is that we live in the among these hosts
Speaker 4: and this forest. And then the third thing, and particularly
Speaker 4: here in Connecticut is that we have in some places
Speaker 4: an abundance of an invasive shrub plant that's known as
Speaker 4: Japanese barberry. And unfortunately, these barbary is often sold as
Speaker 4: an ornamental plant by nurseries and garden centers, and so
Speaker 4: you can buy it and plant it, and unfortunately it
Speaker 4: can become very widespread and is really damaging to the
Speaker 4: forest ecology. And the thing about Japanese barbary is now
Speaker 4: we know that places that have more barbary actually tend
Speaker 4: to have more ticks, and so it sort of adds
Speaker 4: to this you know, already problematic environment. Now we have
Speaker 4: to worry about, you know, barberry being something that's going
Speaker 4: to to help foster this survival and of ticks.
Speaker 2: I mean, I get it. Barbary is pink, it's cute,
Speaker 2: it's evergreen. But barbary GTFO I hate you now, O
Speaker 2: so down with the barbary?
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely if you have barbary should consider removing it
Speaker 4: from your yard. Please don't ever buy barbary at your
Speaker 4: garden center. Find something else to plant. The other thing
Speaker 4: in backyards that people have besides just like a wooded edge,
Speaker 4: is in this region, people have this groundcover vegetation like
Speaker 4: pacissandra or myrtle, and that you know, it's very low
Speaker 4: to the ground, and then underneath it it's a very
Speaker 4: moist environment. So this tick species, the black legged tick,
Speaker 4: really needs a very high humidity, like eighty to ninety
Speaker 4: five percent humidity to survive well, and so it spends
Speaker 4: a lot of time down in that moist environment. So
Speaker 4: people who have this pacassandra, it looks very nice, but
Speaker 4: you know it's a great tick haven. And so that's
Speaker 4: again something to consider in your own landscape, like should
Speaker 4: I remove it or if you're going to treat with
Speaker 4: a tick control product, you want to treat not just
Speaker 4: the wooded edge, but also you know, groundcover, vegetation or
Speaker 4: the ticks may also be abundant.
Speaker 3: So pacissandra barbary canceled, cancel, yeah.
Speaker 4: Or cancel or treat or a treat your yard. But
Speaker 4: certainly a barbary is bad for so many reasons, not
Speaker 4: just for ticks. It's just shouldn't be in our forests.
Speaker 3: Ooh, that's good to know. I had no idea, yea.
Speaker 4: The truth is, you know, I think knowing just knowing
Speaker 4: about whether or not you are in a risky environment
Speaker 4: for getting a tick bite can go a long way,
Speaker 4: and so you know, taking preventive action and knowing what
Speaker 4: a tick looks like is huge. So a lot of
Speaker 4: people to send us pictures of ticks or things they've found.
Speaker 4: They send us stuff in the mail, and you know
Speaker 4: it's it's not a tick. And if you if you're
Speaker 4: able to just know the key distinguishing features, can go
Speaker 4: a long way towards keeping people safe. And so yeah,
Speaker 4: I I do. I am full agreement. Lime disease is
Speaker 4: a major problem. Tickboard illnesses are a major problem in
Speaker 4: the US, and you know, we're really focused on trying
Speaker 4: to prevent it. But I think, you know, because we're
Speaker 4: dealing with humans. You know, we're pretty good actually at
Speaker 4: controlling ticks, and we're we're not very good at controlling humans.
Speaker 4: And so people, we find that people don't always get
Speaker 4: good at prevention until they've been sick themselves or someone
Speaker 4: in their family has been sick. And so what we
Speaker 4: need is people to be thinking about it before they're
Speaker 4: sick and taking action before they get a tick bite,
Speaker 4: you know, not waiting until that happens. And it's scarce,
Speaker 4: you know, Jesus out of everyone. And then and then
Speaker 4: they go running around trying to figure out what to do.
Speaker 4: And the other issue we have is that, you know,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of misinformation out there in terms of
Speaker 4: you know, even prevention, which you think is a benign topic.
Speaker 4: Just this morning, on our you know, community social media pages,
Speaker 4: someone asked for advice about preventing backyard tics and then
Speaker 4: the responses you know, really varied from stuff that's science
Speaker 4: based to you know, totally erroneous and not science based.
Speaker 4: And so the age of information has kind of put
Speaker 4: us in a place where you know, people have to
Speaker 4: think critically about is this good information? And should I
Speaker 4: use it? And so that's that's something we're battling now,
Speaker 4: is trying to understand human behavior and how we can
Speaker 4: you know, get people to take action and feel you know,
Speaker 4: empowered to take action in a way that is going
Speaker 4: to be effective.
Speaker 2: And I think that people are a little bit just
Speaker 2: kind of stunned and don't know what to do. So
Speaker 2: they're just afraid of getting it without really knowing how
Speaker 2: to prevent it because they're so little and sneaky that
Speaker 2: it just seems like getting bitten by a ghost, Like what.
Speaker 3: Do you getting too?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so it's good to know that there are
Speaker 2: measures that you can take to prevent that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and just understanding that like a tick, it takes
Speaker 4: some time before it actually can can suck your blood.
Speaker 4: It's a whole process. They have to salivate and they
Speaker 4: have to fight your immune system and then they in
Speaker 4: space they salivate this cement so they can really stick
Speaker 4: on you and never come out, you know, and not never,
Speaker 4: but not while they're feeding, and so it but and
Speaker 4: then they sell it and then you know, the blood
Speaker 4: is accumulated ticks and they feed really slowly at first,
Speaker 4: and so like really people like they have the tick,
Speaker 4: it's been on them for you know, an hour, they
Speaker 4: take it off, they have a red mark, and all
Speaker 4: of a sudden they're like, I need three weeks of doxycycling, right,
Speaker 4: And and that's not necessarily always the case. Sometimes the
Speaker 4: red mark is just you're having a reaction to a
Speaker 4: tick bite or you know, it's it's it's knowing these
Speaker 4: small bits of information about how these ticks behave or
Speaker 4: you know, what a tick looks like that can really
Speaker 4: help you know if you need to run and get
Speaker 4: three weeks of doxycycling, which you know, has its own issues.
Speaker 4: We worry about antibiotic resistance and all of that. So
Speaker 4: so I think, you know, it's it's getting to know
Speaker 4: the information. But that's true for all diseases, right, Like
Speaker 4: you're supposed to be good at preventing all you know,
Speaker 4: twos decay and so you brush every day. But that's
Speaker 4: a habit, right, So are you checking for ticks every day?
Speaker 2: What's our new motto? Be your crevice's best friend?
Speaker 3: Maybe not?
Speaker 4: So how can we turn it into a habit? If
Speaker 4: you can help me figure that out, I'd love.
Speaker 2: That significant others can always be a tick check buddy,
Speaker 2: I'm sure totally.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, and if we know that ticchecking is protective,
Speaker 4: and we know that showering is protective, maybe you could
Speaker 4: make that into like a you know, activity together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like ticks, but make it sexy.
Speaker 4: Really? Yeah, I mean why not if that's what it takes. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean I'm trying to imagine what that you know
Speaker 4: infographic that we promote next is gonna be. But why not?
Speaker 4: I mean I think at this point you have to
Speaker 4: you know, if it's gonna grab your attention and make
Speaker 4: you take action, then we'll do it, right.
Speaker 3: Can I ask you a couple more listener questions?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 3: Is that cool?
Speaker 2: Don Ewald wants to know there have been some studies
Speaker 2: about mosquitoes and their possible preferences for certain blood types.
Speaker 2: Are there any studies on blood types that ticks prefer?
Speaker 4: Oh, so it's interesting. There are no studies that I'm
Speaker 4: aware of that show that ticks have a host preference.
Speaker 4: We do know with mosquitos that they do. They will
Speaker 4: seek tend to seek women over men and brunettes over blondes.
Speaker 2: Okay, so side note, Apparently there's something about the contrast
Speaker 2: that the mosquitoes just really dig. So likewise, if you're
Speaker 2: a brunette on a light sandy beach, just watch out
Speaker 2: and don't swat them mosquitos. When you swat them, they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: there you are, and then they just keep writing you.
Speaker 2: Just FYI. Also, as long as we're going down several
Speaker 2: holes on this, blondes report feeling more emboldened socially, but
Speaker 2: brunette's out earned blondes. For more on why we judge
Speaker 2: each other for stupid stuff that doesn't matter, see the
Speaker 2: two part Colology episode about beauty standards. Also, should I
Speaker 2: mention that one study said that redheads have the spiciest
Speaker 2: romantic lives. No, I don't want to mention that that's gross. Oops,
Speaker 2: I did, Okay. I don't know how ticks feel about
Speaker 2: me though.
Speaker 4: With ticks, we don't know, And I think there's some
Speaker 4: question about that, because you know, you hear from people
Speaker 4: all the time. You know, my husband and I are
Speaker 4: both always working in the yard, but he always gets
Speaker 4: ticks and I never do, and he's more tick attractive.
Speaker 4: And in terms of whether or not any of that
Speaker 4: is true, we don't know. What we do know about,
Speaker 4: particularly about the black legged tick, is that it will
Speaker 4: feed on everything. It feeds on mammals, it feeds on birds,
Speaker 4: it feeds on reptiles, and it really is opportunistic. It
Speaker 4: feeds on large mammals and small mammals. So I think
Speaker 4: that this particular tick species, Lime perpetrator, is pretty easy
Speaker 4: going when it comes to choosing a host. But whether
Speaker 4: or not it might choose you over me if we
Speaker 4: were standing right there presenting ourselves as hosts, I don't
Speaker 4: know the answer, and we do talk about it a lot,
Speaker 4: and I think it needs further study.
Speaker 2: Nita's body, though, lets her note when she's got a
Speaker 2: sucky blood barnacle. I think it's great that you have
Speaker 2: essentially a very loud car alarm in your body. That's
Speaker 2: like you got a tick you gotta take. Yeah, helpful
Speaker 2: that you have an immune response to it.
Speaker 3: Perhaps, Yeah.
Speaker 4: And actually so some researchers are, you know, trying to
Speaker 4: capitalize on that, because there are people who are very
Speaker 4: reactive to ticks, and so can there be a vaccine
Speaker 4: that is an anti tick vaccine? Right? And it will
Speaker 4: make you itchy or reactive to a tick bite so
Speaker 4: that you catch it before it has time to transmit anything.
Speaker 4: So using those reactive properties that some people have to
Speaker 4: try and create a vaccine.
Speaker 2: His last listener question is Kelly Dames wants to know
Speaker 2: how does the town of Line feel about having a
Speaker 2: disease name you'd.
Speaker 4: Have to the town of Lime residents. I really don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean, they're, yeah, they're sort of famous for this,
Speaker 4: and I don't know. I guess it's good to be
Speaker 4: on the mat for some reason. And actually, I mean
Speaker 4: there was a woman who really was the start of
Speaker 4: all of this becoming known, and her name was Polly Murray,
Speaker 4: and she was a very astute mother who was noticing
Speaker 4: that there were a lot of kids getting arthritis around
Speaker 4: the area. And so if it weren't for her real
Speaker 4: great powers of observation, you know, it might have taken
Speaker 4: a lot longer to come up with that. So I
Speaker 4: think the town of Limes should be very proud. And
Speaker 4: I think, you know, why not be proud of that
Speaker 4: and having you know, someone who is astute enough to say, Okay,
Speaker 4: something's going on here.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There was some some kids movie I was watching with
Speaker 3: my kids.
Speaker 4: I think it was like Madagascar or something like that,
Speaker 4: and they were, you know, Chris Rock his character was like.
Speaker 3: Come on, what would Connecticut have to offer us lime disease?
Speaker 3: Thank you, Melman, I'm my god for Connecticut. That's where
Speaker 3: you know, that's what we get as being.
Speaker 4: Even know what we're known for.
Speaker 3: Now, what is something about your job? Last two questions?
Speaker 2: I always ask that you really hate what sucks about
Speaker 2: ticks or your job?
Speaker 4: What sucks about ticks? You were making a pun that
Speaker 4: was great?
Speaker 2: No, I swear, I wasn't I swear, but I fully
Speaker 2: understand that I have no credibility anymore when it comes
Speaker 2: to denying dad jokes. Okay, but yes, what slices her
Speaker 2: open and takes a blood meal out of her day.
Speaker 3: What sucks.
Speaker 4: I mean, I love my job. I feel so lucky
Speaker 4: that I can, you know, study an organism that I
Speaker 4: absolutely think is you know, very important and also really
Speaker 4: very cool from the biology standpoint, you know, as someone
Speaker 4: who's trying to run research studies. And I guess the
Speaker 4: sometimes there's a lot of you know, paperwork and stuff
Speaker 4: like that, and that's that's probably the hardest part. But
Speaker 4: I think that other scientists may like that more, but
Speaker 4: not really for me. I think I feel really lucky
Speaker 4: that this is something that I get to do for
Speaker 4: my for my job I really love. I want nothing
Speaker 4: more than to be out in the field, you know,
Speaker 4: doing the field work, you know, collecting the tics we'll
Speaker 4: do well. Last summer we had a study were actually
Speaker 4: were laying down and we were sitting and we were kneeling.
Speaker 4: We were trying to figure out what activities get us
Speaker 4: or you know, you know, be more risky than others.
Speaker 4: And I mean I could do that all day. It's
Speaker 4: my favorite thing. And when I have to stay inside
Speaker 4: and do a budget or report, I feel so sad
Speaker 4: to watch everyone go out without me because I would
Speaker 4: do it all day long, every day. I love it.
Speaker 2: Her favorite thing about her job is lying down to
Speaker 2: have ticks literally.
Speaker 3: Eat her alive. God, I love her. I love ologists
Speaker 3: so much. What was the position that got you the
Speaker 3: most ticks? Stay tuned.
Speaker 4: We only did a We only did a pilot, and
Speaker 4: we're gonna scale it up a little bit this year.
Speaker 4: But you know, I think surprisingly to many people, you know,
Speaker 4: we found that a lot of our ticks were found
Speaker 4: above the knee from these activities. So, you know, a
Speaker 4: lot of people think, you know, you're only going to
Speaker 4: if you're walking through the woods, it's going to end
Speaker 4: up on your on your shoes. And it may be that,
Speaker 4: you know, it's when you kneel down to pull a weed,
Speaker 4: or when you you know, drop you know, pick up
Speaker 4: a stick, or you're clearing brush in your yard. You
Speaker 4: might get it on your arm. And certainly laying down
Speaker 4: is a risky thing to do in the woods. I
Speaker 4: don't know how many people do that, but we did it,
Speaker 4: and uh, and that seemed to I think, I think
Speaker 4: it was either sitting down or laying down that that
Speaker 4: exposed us to the most nymph stage ticks. And it
Speaker 4: was Yeah, it's fun. I I don't say that lately.
Speaker 4: I know that you know, ticks are a major risky thing,
Speaker 4: but I just, you know, just to give you an
Speaker 4: idea of the things that we do improve prevention, we
Speaker 4: put ourselves out there.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: My last question is always what's your favorite thing about
Speaker 2: your job? But apparently yours is lying in the woods
Speaker 2: waiting for ticks.
Speaker 4: Yes, I love it. I love collecting ticks. I love
Speaker 4: and I also love looking at the ticks under the microscope.
Speaker 4: They're just they're amazing. If you look at one up
Speaker 4: close there, it's pretty astounding to see their enemy is
Speaker 4: really complicated. Just if you could look at a picture
Speaker 4: of the tick hypostomach, that's their feeding tube. It has
Speaker 4: multiple like teeth on them and they're they're barbed so
Speaker 4: that you know, the tick easily can go in, but
Speaker 4: it's more hard for it to come out. It's very elaborate,
Speaker 4: and different tick species have different you know, we call
Speaker 4: it dentation. It's the different numbers of these little teeth spines,
Speaker 4: and it's really incredible to look up clothes. So I
Speaker 4: recommend everyone take a look.
Speaker 2: It really looks like if a knife grew more knives
Speaker 2: on the surface of the knife.
Speaker 3: It's a micro horror.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love bugs. Yeah, I have to say
Speaker 2: that ticks are the like takes. It kind of the
Speaker 2: ones on my shit list of like ticks and cockroaches.
Speaker 2: I feel bad because I'm like, I do think that
Speaker 2: it's really great to respect them for how stealthy they are.
Speaker 3: So I think that's a great, a really good.
Speaker 2: Thing to start. Just outsmart them. It's don't hate them,
Speaker 2: just outsmart them.
Speaker 4: Maybe. I think that's a really great I.
Speaker 2: Like that this has one on my list forever. Thank
Speaker 2: you for being so passionate. I'm so I'm so glad
Speaker 2: that you got headlights as a child.
Speaker 3: Me too.
Speaker 4: It's really firm. Who I am? I actually had sort
Speaker 4: of forgotten about that, and I was telling the story
Speaker 4: to someone not that long ago, and then I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know that could have been the moment.
Speaker 3: We're all better for it. So thanks for getting headlines.
Speaker 4: Well, I you're welcome. I don't know, yes, bye bye.
Speaker 2: So hop on a phone and ask smart people stupid
Speaker 2: questions because the world is a mysterious and dark and
Speaker 2: interesting place and I know we're all terrified of ticks.
Speaker 2: But they did a lot of evolving to get where
Speaker 2: they're at, and we have pretty big, squishy brains, so
Speaker 2: let's just try to outsmart them again. So much info
Speaker 2: is up at tickcounter dot org and Nita's videos are
Speaker 2: at spray safe playsafe dot org. I will put a
Speaker 2: link to my site in the show notes. You can
Speaker 2: find all this stuff there, and remember daily ticcheck be
Speaker 2: your Crevis's best friend. Now you can follow Nita because
Speaker 2: she's amazing. She's at tiklab on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook,
Speaker 2: just at ticklab. God bless her for that uniformity. And
Speaker 2: her lab website is www WCSU ticklab dot com and
Speaker 2: I will put a link in the show notes. Ologies
Speaker 2: is at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. Say hello there,
Speaker 2: I'm at Ali Ward with one L on both Twitter
Speaker 2: and Instagram. Thank you Hannah Lippo and Aaron Talbert for
Speaker 2: admining the Facebook Ologies podcast group full of curious non
Speaker 2: jerks who are so sweet to each other. And ologiesmerch
Speaker 2: dot com has all of your Ologies podcast merch needs
Speaker 2: shirts and tots and pins and hats. If you post
Speaker 2: a photo to Instagram tagged with Ologies merch, I repost
Speaker 2: on Mondays and thank you to Shannon Feltas and Bonnie
Speaker 2: Jutch for helping manage that the last two years. They're
Speaker 2: two sisters who have a brand new, hilarious and charming
Speaker 2: pod called You Are That, and it's out now wherever
Speaker 2: you get podcasts, So find it, subscribe and get to
Speaker 2: know them in episode zero, and then on June tenth,
Speaker 2: their first episode's.
Speaker 3: Drop and you will love them.
Speaker 2: Also, Happy birthday to Aiden Feltis on June tenth. Assistant
Speaker 2: editing was done by Jarrett Sleeper of mind Jam Media.
Speaker 2: He also hosts the mental health podcast My Good Bad Brain,
Speaker 2: which has the best theme music ever.
Speaker 3: Just trust me, go listen. You'll get it stuck in
Speaker 3: your head all day and be so happy about it.
Speaker 2: Also, thank you to Stephen Ray Morris of the per
Speaker 2: Cast and see Jurassic Right for stitching this all together
Speaker 2: every week. This week gets up a little late because
Speaker 2: someone I love very much was in the hospital and
Speaker 2: so I was out of town helping out.
Speaker 3: And also I had a few backback shoots in the
Speaker 3: middle of moving.
Speaker 2: So I'm just getting my bearings and everything will be
Speaker 2: good and normal next week, I promise, which brings me
Speaker 2: to the secret. At the end of an episode, I
Speaker 2: think two weeks ago, I told y'all that my wallet
Speaker 2: was stolen at Walmart.
Speaker 3: Guess what. Guess what happened.
Speaker 2: The sheriff called and someone found it in a bush
Speaker 2: near Walmart with everything in it but the cash, which
Speaker 2: at this point is fine. And it's very good because
Speaker 2: I hadn't even had a chance to tell the DMV
Speaker 2: that I needed a new ID, and I'm getting on
Speaker 2: another plane in.
Speaker 3: A few hours.
Speaker 2: And the TSA side note, does not appreciate expired passports.
Speaker 2: Is ID. They punish you with a booty massage in
Speaker 2: front of all the other passengers, but jokes on them
Speaker 2: because sometimes they squeeze your feet while doing a pat down,
Speaker 2: and honestly, it's very comforting and I like it.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, you got to check your crevices yourself.
Speaker 2: Though they don't do tip checks, don't even ask, not
Speaker 2: their job. Okay, goodbye, pacadermastology, homeology, crypto zoology, lithology, yeah, technology, meteorology, patternology, napology, zeriology, elology.
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