Mountain Life
  • Daily Content
    • Trips & Expeditions
    • Climbing
    • Mountain Biking
    • Mountain Lifer
    • Multiplicity
    • On The Trail
    • Paddling
    • Photography
    • Skiing
    • Snowboarding
    • Stay & Play
    • Surfing
    • The Great Outdoors
    • The ML Interview
    • Travel
  • GEAR
  • VIDEOS
  • STORE
  • Magazines
    • ML Coast Mountains
    • ML Rocky Mountains
    • Vie En Montagne
    • ML Blue Mountains
    • ML Annual
    • ML Subscriptions
  • ABOUT
    • What is ML?
    • Our Team
    • Newsletter
    • Adventure Grant
    • Distribution
  • Podcast
  • Contests
  • CONTACT
    • ML Agency
    • Advertising
    • Contribute
Subscription Form

Get notified of the best News

Social Links
Instagram 22K Followers
Facebook 25K Likes
Twitter 5K Followers
Pinterest 1K Followers
Vimeo 34 Followers
LinkedIn 0
22K Followers
25K Likes
5K Followers
1K Followers
Mountain Life
Mountain Life
  • Daily Content
    • Trips & Expeditions
    • Climbing
    • Mountain Biking
    • Mountain Lifer
    • Multiplicity
    • On The Trail
    • Paddling
    • Photography
    • Skiing
    • Snowboarding
    • Stay & Play
    • Surfing
    • The Great Outdoors
    • The ML Interview
    • Travel
  • GEAR
  • VIDEOS
  • STORE
  • Magazines
    • ML Coast Mountains
    • ML Rocky Mountains
    • Vie En Montagne
    • ML Blue Mountains
    • ML Annual
    • ML Subscriptions
  • ABOUT
    • What is ML?
    • Our Team
    • Newsletter
    • Adventure Grant
    • Distribution
  • Podcast
  • Contests
  • CONTACT
    • ML Agency
    • Advertising
    • Contribute
  • The Great Outdoors

TICKS SUCK: Fear and loathing with the Swiss Army Knife of disease vectors.

  • June 10, 2014
  • Leslie Anthony
Total
0
Shares
0
0
0
0
0
0
Total
0
Shares
Share 0
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Share 0
Share 0
Share 0
Tick_scanning
Like a giant alien oil rig, and it knows how to drill, baby, drill.

by Leslie Anthony

I jump at every tickle on my skin. My scalp tingles under my hat. I have the constant feeling that something’s crawling up my leg. And though these sensations can be variously traced to benign agents like dry skin, stray threads, or nothing at all, they are very real. A case of delusional parasitosis? Hardly. This is bona fide acaraphobia.

Officially, acaraphobia is “the fear of small bugs that cause itching skin,” however, it’s no coincidence that the word’s root is shared with order Acarina—mites and ticks. The latter, in fact, are what have me scurrying to public restrooms, lifting my shirt and straining to see my back in the mirror. This is not uncommon among outdoorists across Canada who spend time hiking or biking on tick-addled game trails.

I come by this paranoia honestly. Conducting biological work on the deer-trail-laced hillsides of Pemberton, British Columbia, dozens of ticks have found their way onto my well-worn field pants. Though most were summarily flicked into oblivion, several persisted in finding their way to a meal. Last spring I excavated six of the little bastards—heads buried, legs waving—from my back, armpit, inner leg, and scrotum (an inspired choice, given the blood supply); I intercepted another crawling over my chest while reading in bed.

IMG_7059
Yes, this small. Tick nymph between thumb and forefinger.
IMG_4219
Digging in: Adult tick discovered burrowing into my arm. Bastard.

And though most people manifest acarphobia with far less provocation, another factor has propelled mine to the acute. As I’ve suffered these unwelcome skinvasions, I coincidentally read about them. The one strolling across my pecs appeared halfway through David Quammen’s book, Spillover, about animal diseases that make the leap to humans, in which ticks figure prominently. And just days ago, Outside published “The Rise of the Tick,” summarizing how these insidious creatures have become the world’s scariest pathogen purveyors. While many diseases are discussed, in both exposés, you won’t be surprised to hear, the focus is Lyme disease—the affliction that federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May is now advocating in parilament we develop a national strategy for.

Discovered near the eponymous Connecticut town in the late seventies, Lyme is the most common tick-borne disease in North America. Caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, it can lead to serious, long-term problems, making early diagnosis and antibiotic treatment essential. Since then, the disease has spread relentlessly; today, Lyme occurs from California to Virginia and across southern Canada. And while 38,000 are diagnosed each year in the U.S., Canada’s 50 annual cases likely represent gross underreporting. Especially since the tick responsible, Ixodes scapularis, benefits from climate warming and other anthropogenic factors.

Ticks are born free of Borrelia; they acquire it from a reservoir host. Thus, all three blood-sucking life-stages—larvae, nymphs and adults—can carry the pathogen. And more, as Outside points out: “Ticks are champions at spreading diseases, expanding in both poor countries and rich ones, and delivering an extraordinary menagerie of bacteria, protozoans, and viruses. In a 2010 report on the dangers of ticks, the … National Academy of Sciences, declared the animals, with what sounds almost like admiration, ‘the Swiss Army knife of disease vectors.’”

Screen-Shot-2014-05-23-at-10.22.48-AM
A larvae, nymph and adult of the deer tick: all suck, all carry disease.

Evolutionarily, ticks have had time to get it right: around 300 million years. The thousand or so species now found on every continent—including Antarctica—differ in size, shape, and color but not in the way they feed. When a tick latches onto a host, it finds a blood vessel close to the surface, cuts through the skin, inserts its barbed, tube-shaped mouthpart, secretes a “magic-potion” saliva containing anticoagulent, analgesic, and antihistamine (the reason you often don’t feel them), and, over the course of a few days drinking, swells to many times its original size before dropping off. That’s some serious acaraphobia right there.

When Lyme disease was first traced to black-legged (deer) ticks, the solution offered was to cull the deer that were populating abandoned farmland like weeds. But it didn’t work. Why? Adult black-legged ticks prefer deer, but larva and nymphs need small mammals like mice. Historically, tick and infection prevalence would have been moderated by natural control of these hosts. Mouse-scarfing foxes originally coexisted with wolves in North America, but once wolves were eradicated, coyotes—which kill or scare off foxes—took their place. Without foxes, mice populations explode, feeding a growing horde of ticks and their pathogens. Thus, our growing tick problem—and Lyme disease—is an effect of ecosystem alteration.

120329ticks
Ticks usually get on your feet first. Rubber boots are a good counter measure.

And there’s more: a widespread invasive plant—Japanese barberry—is creating the humid conditions that let ticks thrive. In a Connecticut study, barberry-dominated sites contained 140 infected ticks per acre; in places cleared of barberry, only 10. Overlay Lyme disease data with a map showing distribution of Japanese barberry and it lines up horrifyingly well—another anthropogenic ecosystem-level effect.

Research on Lyme disease in B.C. suggests a real but low risk of contracting the illness. Less than 1 per cent of 3,500 mice screened in a B.C. study were infected with Borrelia, whose prevalence in the preferred tick host (I. pacificus) was also less than half a per cent. Meanwhile, B.C.’s most common tick, Dermacentor andersoni, isn’t a competent vector. That’s why, despite having once suffered gravely from a tick-borne illness (typhus—acquired on a climbing trip in Mexico), my paranoia isn’t over Lyme disease itself, but the sneaky, blood-seeking carriers that make your skin crawl. Because let’s face it—ticks suck.

Ticks_KnownDiseases_Horiz

Total
0
Shares
Share 0
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Share 0
Share 0
Share 0
Related Topics
  • Acaraphobia
  • British Columbia
  • disease vectors
  • Leslie Anthony
  • lyme disease
  • nature
  • ticks
Leslie Anthony

Previous Article
  • Mountain Lifer

Sea-Kayaking Oregon’s Coastal Caves

  • June 9, 2014
  • Ned Morgan
View Post
Next Article
  • Mountain Lifer

Sleeping on Summits

  • June 11, 2014
  • Ned Morgan
View Post
You May Also Like
View Post
  • On The Trail
  • The Great Outdoors

Helly Hansen Presents: Adventure Planning 101 with Squamish SAR

  • Sarah Bulford
  • May 16, 2022
View Post
  • Skiing
  • Snowboarding
  • The Great Outdoors

Blower Pow and Disappearing Pants

  • Sarah Bulford
  • April 26, 2022
View Post
  • In This Issue
  • The Great Outdoors

ML Launches Mushroom Life

  • Sarah Bulford
  • April 1, 2022
View Post
  • Leslie Anthony
  • Skiing
  • Snowboarding
  • Stay & Play
  • The Great Outdoors

Spring at Sun Peaks

  • Sarah Bulford
  • March 8, 2022
View Post
  • Mountain Lifer
  • The Great Outdoors

Backcountry Skier John Baldwin Headlines VIMFF’s 2022 Best of British Columbia Night

  • Sarah Bulford
  • February 22, 2022
View Post
  • FALL GEAR
  • SPRING GEAR
  • THE GEAR SHED
  • The Great Outdoors
  • WINTER GEAR

The Legend of San Poncho

  • Editor
  • December 9, 2021
735990496 1280x720
View Post
  • The Great Outdoors
  • Videos

Friday Flick: Island of Plenty

  • Sarah Bulford
  • July 2, 2021
View Post
  • On The Trail
  • The Great Outdoors

Win Adventures to the Filming Location of the HISTORY® Channel’s “Alone” Season 8!

  • Sarah Bulford
  • June 8, 2021

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Featured Posts
  • Mountain-Life-Coast-Mountains-Winter-2023 1
    ML Coast Mountains Winter-Spring ’23 Issue Out Now
    • February 3, 2023
  • Saint-Lawrence-ice-canoe-Jean-Anderson 2
    Jean Anderson: 40 Years of Ice Canoeing
    • January 31, 2023
  • CHOK-Images-RAB-Avril-2022 3
    Chic-Chocs: True Eastern Alpine
    • February 2, 2023
  • Life-Time-Grand-Prix-gravel-bike 4
    New Docuseries Profiles the World’s Elite Off-Road Cyclists
    • January 30, 2023
  • Fjallraven-Nuuk-Parka-daniel-blom-photo_jacket 5
    Gear Shed: Multisport Winter Roundup
    • January 26, 2023
RECENT POSTS
  • L'Hymne-des-Trembles-Laurentians-Quebec
    L’Hymne des Trembles: Uncompromising Laurentian Skiing
    • January 27, 2023
  • Brian-Hockenstein-surfing-Iceland-water-and-ice-ML
    In the Land of Water & Ice
    • January 24, 2023
  • Marie-Pier-Desharnais-A-Womans-Experience-on-K2-flag-crop
    Marie-Pier Desharnais: A Woman’s Experience on K2
    • January 23, 2023
Social Links
Instagram 22K Followers
Facebook 25K Likes
Twitter 5K Followers
Pinterest 1K Followers
Vimeo 34 Followers
LinkedIn 0
INSTAGRAM
mountainlifemedia
22K Followers
Live It Up EP 22 is OUT NOW!
NEW ML Coast Mountains Winter-Spring ’23 Issue is OUT NOW! 🙌
There are some first times that we will always remember. Like the time I skied off-piste through the alpine highlands of le parc national de la Gaspésie.
@shimizuimg getting those January goods ❄️ #mountainlifer
With four decades of ice canoeing under his belt, Jean Anderson has dominated a sport that's unique to Quebec and that he helped shape.
Featuring three gravel and three MTB events, the series explores the intense competition and love of the sport among 60 of the world’s premier cyclists.
Winter commute with #mountainlifer @michelle_pittam ❄️🚵‍♀️🌲
@lhymnedestrembles.ca is no mirage. Set in the lush Laurentian forest, yet easily accessible (less than an hour and a half from Montreal), this luxurious ski-in ski-out residential resort by @groupebrivia is nestled at the foot of the Versant Soleil side of Mont Tremblant. The Tremblant region is a perennial destination for outdoor enthusiasts from around the world, and within the province, attracting 3.5 million visitors annually.
ML staff and gear partners highlight the latest jackets, boards, crampons, hoodies, insoles and bindings in alpha order. #Linkinbio to learn more!
Adventures like this one require an inspiring team. @timemmett is a longtime friend, adventure partner and extraordinary human; an explorer, pro climber, surfer, freediver—you name it. @luca.freediver is an incredibly talented freediver, fresh off breaking the Canadian national freediving record (85 metres). The fourth man on the team, @brianhockenstein, is a filmmaker and multi-talented snowboarder always ready to jump into the fray and capture the magic. - words Jimmy Martinello. #Linkinbio to learn more!
Follow

Subscribe

Subscribe now to our newsletter

Live It Up EP 22 is OUT NOW!
NEW ML Coast Mountains Winter-Spring ’23 Issue is OUT NOW! 🙌
There are some first times that we will always remember. Like the time I skied off-piste through the alpine highlands of le parc national de la Gaspésie.
@shimizuimg getting those January goods ❄️ #mountainlifer
With four decades of ice canoeing under his belt, Jean Anderson has dominated a sport that's unique to Quebec and that he helped shape.
Featuring three gravel and three MTB events, the series explores the intense competition and love of the sport among 60 of the world’s premier cyclists.
Mountain Life
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
  • Advertising

Input your search keywords and press Enter.