Fleas and ticks both feed on pets and people, but they create different risks. Fleas can spread rapidly through your home. Ticks usually present a greater concern for serious disease transmission. Ticks usually carry the greater medical risk, while fleas are more likely to become a persistent household problem. Your location, the pest species, your…
A tiny bug that looks red may not be a tick at all. No known tick species in the United States is naturally bright red, so color alone cannot identify the pest or predict disease risk. Reddish-brown hard ticks are common. A soft tick can look red briefly after feeding. To identify red ticks more…
Ticks are arachnids, and their color alone cannot tell you whether a tick bite is dangerous. Black, brown, reddish, gray, and patterned ticks may all transmit pathogens, depending on the species, life stage, location, and feeding history. Treat every attached tick as a potential health concern. Remove it promptly and watch for symptoms. When you…
Ticks are most common where shade, moisture, leaf litter, and animal traffic come together. You may find them along wooded paths, in tall grass, beneath shrubs, around stone walls, near woodpiles, and in vegetation bordering a lawn. The edge between a maintained area and denser natural cover often has the most ticks. Ticks do not…
If you want to know which ticks are the bad ones, focus on the species that commonly bite people and carry pathogens in the United States. The blacklegged tick is the primary concern for Lyme disease. Lone star, American dog, Rocky Mountain wood, Gulf Coast, and other regional ticks can transmit different bacteria, viruses, or…
Ticks are tiny arachnids, so you may not notice a tick bite until hours or days after outdoor exposure. They often crawl before attaching, seeking protected areas such as skin folds, hair, or clothing edges. You are most likely to find an attached tick around the scalp, hairline, ears, armpits, waist, groin, buttocks, behind the…
You can find lone star ticks across much of the eastern, southeastern, south-central, and midwestern United States. The lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum, is especially common in wooded areas, brush, tall grass, and places where deer and other wildlife move. Lone star ticks live across a broad part of the United States, so you may…
Bacteria transmitted through the bite of an infected tick cause Lyme disease. In the United States, specific Ixodes species, commonly called blacklegged ticks or deer ticks, serve as the proven vectors. The blacklegged tick and western blacklegged tick can carry Borrelia burgdorferi, the primary Lyme disease bacterium in the United States. Knowing the tick’s species…
Ticks can attach almost anywhere on your cat. They are easiest to miss where the fur is dense or the skin is thin. Start around the ears, eyelids, collar, neck, armpits, belly, groin, and paws. Then continue with a head-to-tail check. The safest way to find a tick is to part your cat’s fur, inspect…
Ticks in South Africa do more than annoy people outdoors. Several species can transmit diseases to people, pets, and livestock. The risk varies by habitat, season, and the animals nearby. For people, bont ticks linked to African tick-bite fever are among the most important dangerous ticks in South Africa. Your risk increases during hiking, gardening,…