Ticks are waking up across most of the U.S. They require blood meals to survive, to develop to the next stage in their life cycle and to reproduce, shares Edward M. Wakem, DVM.
It is primarily, though not exclusively, through blood feeding that a tick can harm its host by acquiring disease-causing organisms from one infected host and transmitting them to another host. Ticks not only suck blood, they also spit. They concentrate their blood meals by taking blood from the hemorrhagic pool and returning waste, plasma and lymph to the host via the salivary glands.
The female blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis, may feed on as much as 15 ml of host blood according to one expert.
Source: Veterinary Practice News, March 16, 2020. Link. Tick science is complicated and often the only agreement is disagreement when discussing Lyme disease in both humans and dog. The danger is not just the tick itself, but the sum total of what it does, namely feed on blood and transmit toxins and pathogens. A multimodal, risk-management approach is the best strategy to mitigate the threat of any tick-borne disease to companion animals.
INSIGHTS: Dr. Wakem provides a detailed discussion of ticks, tick-born disease and transmission beliefs in this article. He is a veterinary services manager with Ceva Animal Health, which helped fund AHD’s development and growth < link >.