So, I saw something new today. Whilst I walked in the mountains with a good friend of mine, we stumbled upon SEVERAL ticks that were questing on old scat. There were at least 10 of them. @Insectra you may not have an answer to this, but why scat? Most of them are difficult to see, but there are six in the picture. I really need a macro lens.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Looks like there is tons of fur in that scat - maybe briefly (in the warm sun) made them think it was a live furred animal.
RavenCT
Level 9
June 3, 2019
1
@LifelongLearner I've no clue - except here they'd be all over anything with fur. I bet you're entirely correct about the fur being attached to a living thing.
I do not know what senses a tick has.
Might be good to know so I can go baffle the buggers in the yard?
I really want a family of possums to move in.
I'm no expert, but they could have been attracted to pheromones or blood in the poop. Insects like to extract leftover nutrients from poo too. It's not uncommon to see butterflies getting what they can from poop and dead animals.
FatherOfNyx
Level 7
June 3, 2019
3
@LifelongLearner Could be a gas produced from the decaying scat too. Ticks are simple creatures, but it's kind of difficult to get inside their head to know what they could have been doing.
I got Lyme as a kid and ever since then, I've been a tick magnet. Much like how mosquitoes that can carry malaria are more attracted to people with malaria, I believe that ticks can be more attracted to a person who has or even had a tick-borne illness. I doubt I'd ever be able to personally prove that, I think there's a decent amount we don't know about them. I don't know if decaying poop gives off CO2, but they might sense and track other gases and chemicals we don't know of as well.
Circling back to tick-borne illnesses and what you said about their evolution, they may have evolved to pick up harmful bacteria on poop. Ticks and the diseases they carry make a brutal, successful pairing. What better way to feast on your prey than to make them sick and weaken them? Would make a good coevolution cycle. Tick picks up bacteria from poop, tick infects prey, predator eats prey, bacteria safely passes through digestive tract, predator poops out bacteria, tick picks up bacteria from poop..
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