Ever wonder what happens when a tick bites you? The tick’s mouth is perfectly designed to pierce your skin, drink your blood, and stay in place for days on end.
A Mouth Full of “Spears”
The capitulum (“false head”) of a tick is the Swiss Army Knife of the animal kingdom. The centerpiece is the hypostome, a sword- or spear-like organ equipped on each side with numerous barbs designed to anchor the tick in your flesh once it penetrates to begin feeding. Normally, the hypostome is sheathed inside a pair of jaws called the chelicerae.
The chelicerae are covered in small teeth and have hooks at the ends. Adjacent to the chelicerae, on either side, are the club-shaped palps (which serve sensory purposes).
When a Tick Bites…
The tick inserts both the hypostome and chelicerae into your skin when it bites. The chelicerae do the initial cutting, and also lance blood vessels in the host such that blood pools at the tip of the hypostome.
As if the barbs and teeth aren’t enough, the tick spits out a glue-like substance from its salivary glands and through the hypostome that cements its mouthparts into your flesh. So effective is this array of weaponry that even the most careful extraction of a tick often leaves the mouth parts embedded in the wound.
Dangerous Saliva
The tick begins feeding by secreting saliva with an anticoagulant. This keeps the blood from clotting. It is the saliva that may also contain disease-causing bacteria and viruses. It may also contain a toxin that causes “tick paralysis.” Tick paralysis is not common, and most cases have been from the Rocky Mountain and Pacific coast states.
A hard tick normally feeds for days or weeks, and despite having a hard exoskeleton, its body can expand twenty- to fifty-times its usual size to accommodate a blood meal.
Both male and female ticks bite. Fully-fed females are termed “engorged,” and they drop off the host to lay thousands of eggs on the surface of the ground and amid grasses.
Inspect, Detect, Remove
It is imperative to thoroughly inspect yourself and family members immediately after being outdoors in tick habitat (tall grass, forest edges, narrow woodland paths). Check behind knees, ears, the edges of the scalp, and in armpits and groin. It usually takes hours for a tick to find a suitable location to begin feeding, so the sooner you start looking the more likely you are to find ticks wandering instead of eating.
Remove embedded ticks carefully by grasping the arachnid as close to the head as possible with tweezers or forceps. Pull slowly and steadily until it comes free. See your physician for the potential need for treatment of the bite.
Prevent Tick Bites
Applying a repellent that is designed to repel ticks is a great option to prevent tick bites. Ben’s Tick Repellent uses the CDC-recommended active ingredient picaridin to repel ticks and provides 12 hours of protection. Treat clothing and gear with a permethrin repellent such as Ben’s Clothing and Gear, just apply once for 6 weeks of protection that lasts through multiple washings.
See the Tick Mouth in Action
Fair warning – seeing what happens when a tick bites you is pretty gross!
Resources
- Service, Mike. 2012. Medical Entomology for Students (5th edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 303 pp.
- Drummond, Roger O. 1998. Ticks And What You Can Do About Them. Berkeley: Wilderness Press. 74 pp.
Picture Credits: In Order of Appearance
- Gary Alpert, Harvard University & Bugwood.org
- Susan Ellis, Bugwood.org
- Scott Bauer, USDA Agricultural Research Service & Bugwood.org
- Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University & Bugwood.org