Holiday souvenirs

The title conjures up images of postcards, sea shells and holiday snaps. The souvenir of my recent holiday consists of a plastic vial containing ticks, all extracted from my body.

Ticks are arachnids just like spiders and scorpions and Australia has about 75 species. They are external parasites feeding exclusively on blood. Once on a host a tick will puncture the skin and inject an anaesthetic so the host is unaware of its existence and an anti-coagulant to stop the blood from clotting. It will then consume blood until it has had enough and then drop off.

There are four life stages – egg, larva, nymph and adult with the nymphal stage going through several moulting steps. Each nymph instar requires the ingestion of blood. In this way a tick will have several hosts in its lifetime. Contrary to popular belief a tick cannot leap onto a passing host. A tick will sit on vegetation with its two back pairs of legs. The front pair of legs contain both smell and heat sensors. They are held aloft as the tick searches for a host. When a suitable host brushes past the vegetation on which the tick is sitting it steps on board.

Back to my holiday, I woke up one morning with 5 ticks on my neck and shoulders, pictured right. Ticks can transmit diseases so the recommended treatment for a tick is to kill it and either let it drop off naturally or if you have an experienced medical professional in the vicinity, like I did, get them to remove the tick. It is important to remove all of the tick particularly the head that can cause infection if left in the skin.

I now have a vial of five ticks (including heads). As far as a holiday souvenir goes it does not get a tick of approval.