We have good reason to pay attention to the tiny, flightless, blood-sucking tick. Measuring as small as 1-2mm in their early life stage, they are virtually unnoticeable in fur, hair, or at the tip of grass leaves where they often gather to ambush an animal, bird or human host. Like it’s winged cousin, the mosquito, ticks are vectors of blood-borne disease – as many as 60 different illnesses are transmitted by ticks, some of which are common to both humans and livestock.
So severe are its impacts on livestock that this unassuming insect was the target of a county-wide eradication of one of their species, the southern cattle tick (Rhipicephalus [Boophilus] microplus), in the United States in the mid 1900s. Even though its occurrence in the US remains extremely low – it’s hard to control an insect that can hurdle across the Rio Grande (the US-Mexico border) on the back of a deer after all – it continues to transmit diseases to cattle in tropical and subtropical regions that cost billions upon billions each year.