Pet owners know that the pleasure of having a four-legged friend is not only the joy of being with him. It is also an indispensable care for a pet, which, like a person, can easily get sick. There are a lot of diseases, infections and parasites that cats and dogs can pick up. Including ixodid ticks among them.
Ticks in brief
Before talking in detail about such a variety of ticks as ixodid, it is necessary to at least briefly highlight who ticks are in general. In Latin, the tick is called Acari, it is a representative of arachnids (and not insects, as is commonly thought). Ticks live wherever there is life. The main feature of ticks is the absence of eyes, which, however, does not prevent them from perfectly navigating by smell: for example, they are able to smell their “victim” ten meters away. They are small in length, usually less than a centimeter, but the largest individuals can reach three. Adult mites have four pairs of legs, while juvenile mites have only three. They are not dangerous in themselves - if,of course they are not infected. Ticks are active during the summer - from early May to late September.
Tick varieties
For us, ordinary people, all ticks are one “face”, and meanwhile, there are more than forty thousand species of them in the world. Each of them is the causative agent of a particular infection, some of which are dangerous to humans, others are not. Often, it is ignorance about the "functions" of the tick that causes a lot of problems. It is impossible to talk about all forty thousand species, but the most common ones are quite easy:
- Gamasid mites - their "victims" are birds, chickens, rodents. Chickens lose feathers after being bitten.
- Water mites - as the name implies, they live in water bodies. Their "food" is aquatic insects and mollusks.
- Armored - live on mushrooms, lichens, living plants. Nevertheless, they pose a danger to animals and birds, as they carry helminths.
- Spider mites are completely safe for animals and humans, but not for plants.
- Predatory or mites, "cannibals", feed on their "colleagues".
- Dust mites - not dangerous to living beings, they feed on dust and exfoliated epidermis.
- Ear - live on dogs and cats, cause inflammation of the ears in four-legged pets.
- Scabies mites - cause scabies in both humans and animals. After a bite, severe itching and redness appear.
- Subcutaneous - live on the body of humans and animals, their "food" - dead skin cells. Cause itching and irritation, can live for several years.
- Barns are harmlessfor living beings, are a danger to stocks of flour or grain: they can become moldy and rot.
- Ixodid ticks - more on them later.
Who are they?
This type of tick lives in nature, usually in places with a temperate climate, but in general they are completely unpretentious to living conditions. You can “pick up” such a tick near trees and shrubs, in foliage and grass. Ixodid ticks are quite large (larger than their counterparts) - when they get drunk with blood, they lengthen to two and a half centimeters. Their body is covered with a hard chitinous shell, and the head is very mobile; often, when a stuck tick is pulled out, its head remains in the body of a person or animal.
Ixodid ticks cling to both people and animals with equal pleasure, and they are capable of drinking blood for up to several weeks - unless, of course, they are not detected in time. The females of this species of ticks are incredibly prolific, laying several thousand eggs in one season. Ixodid ticks pose a great danger to humans and animals. They carry a range of serious diseases.
Development of the ixodid tick
It develops in four stages. The first step is the egg. The female tick usually hides its eggs in foliage or rodent burrows. The larvae, having been born, immediately try to "sit down" to any living organism - most often this role is assigned to rodents. Having eaten enough of their blood, the larva leaves a hospitable place and grows further, turninglater into a nymph. Nymphs feed on the blood of larger animals, such as hares.
The next stage of development is the imago, that is, the adult. Here you can't do enough to feed a hare or a mouse. An adult tick needs large “baits”: livestock, dogs, humans. You can undergo “treatment” with ixodid ticks (pictured above) as soon as the weather is sunny and the grass begins to peep through.
Views
Ixodid ticks are divided into two types: namely ixodid and argas. The latter are usually active at night. Their difference from the actual ixodid ticks is that they “settle” not in nature, not in leaves, but closer to future victims - in the crevices of houses, for example. Bites of argas mites cause severe itching, irritation and redness of the skin in the affected area.
Danger
Once again, you need to focus attention: not any ixodid tick is dangerous, but only the one that is infected itself. Unfortunately, it is impossible to find out by external signs, which is why it is so important to seek qualified medical help immediately after detecting a tick.
Ixodid ticks are the causative agents of diseases such as tick-borne encephalitis, "tick-borne paralysis", fevers of various types, typhoid, Lyme disease and many others. If treatment is not started in time, the outcome can be the saddest.
Noticing the bite of a tick is not so easy, because when performing this action, the tick's saliva enters the wound. It is able to anesthetize and slow down blood clotting. Exactlytherefore, it often takes a long time before it is possible to detect the cause of itching and pain. In addition, ticks, as a rule, choose a bite site where, firstly, delicate skin, and secondly, they will not be visible. These are ears, armpits, groin, neck and so on.
Tick in dogs
Quite often, pets - dogs and cats - suffer from the attack of these parasites. As a rule, in dogs, ticks are most often located on the head, behind the ears, on the nose. At the same time, it must be remembered that they do not immediately "fix" in one place, but, so to speak, "travel" through the animal until they choose some point. An important point: it takes an hour or two from getting on the skin of an animal to infection, so if you examine your pet right during a walk, an unpleasant excess can be easily avoided by having time to eliminate the stuck impudent. If the parasite has got on the dog's body recently, it will not be difficult to remove it. It is recommended to pull out the ixodid tick, which “saddled” the dog a longer time ago, with tweezers or petroleum jelly (lubricating the lower part). After removing the tick from the body of the animal, it is necessary to carefully observe its behavior for seven to ten days and, at the slightest sign of illness, go to the hospital.
Ticks can cause just as dangerous diseases in four-legged friends as in humans. For example, one of the infections caused by ixodid ticks in dogs is piroplasmosis. This disease is most common among pets.
Signs of piroplasmosis, which are usually experienced in spring and autumn (this is a seasonal sore), are as follows: lethargy, lack of appetite, a sharp increase in temperature, rapid and difficult breathing, increased pulse, yellow mucous membranes of the eyes and mouth, red urine or coffee color. If left untreated, piroplasmosis is fatal, which is why it is so important to start it on time. To make sure that your pet has this disease, you should take a blood and urine test, and if the situation is resolved and the dog recovers, follow a special diet for a full recovery.
Cats
Bites of ixodid ticks (pictured) are no less dangerous for cats. Just like dogs, cats are most often attacked in spring and autumn. At the same time, you should not think that if the cat is domestic and does not walk on the street, then it cannot become infected. Unfortunately, this is not the case - after all, we humans are able to bring the parasite into the house ourselves - for example, on our shoes.
If the cat is "walking", then each time you return home, it must be carefully examined. If a tick "attacked" a pet, it may not immediately bite into it, but hide in thick cat hair for a while. Then there is a great risk that the parasite will jump onto the owners of the cat. Most often in cats, ixodid ticks cling to the ears, at the withers, in the groin.
After a bite, a cat may develop various unpleasant and even dangerous diseases. Among them are babesiosis, borreliosis (Lyme disease), theileriosis and others. And if the first ofof the above diseases in Russia is a rather rare case, then the last two are very common. With Lyme disease, the animal develops pain in the heart, joints, the kidneys and brain are affected, with theileriosis - the liver, spleen, and lungs. Theileriosis is almost impossible to cure.
If a previously active, cheerful cat has become lethargic, lazy, lethargic, refuses to eat, breathes often and heavily, and in addition to everything, he has a fever - this is a reason to sound the alarm and immediately consult a doctor.
In other animals and humans
It is important to remember what other infections transmitted by ixodid ticks are dangerous for humans and animals. First of all, it is tularemia (damage to the lymph nodes, fever) - people suffer from it. Cows, sheep, goats are prone to a disease such as anaplasmosis - fever, inflammation of the internal organs. Horses can catch encephalomyelitis from a tick, an inflammation of the brain and spinal cord.
Ixodid ticks: fighting them
In order to prevent a parasite from attacking a dog or cat, it is better to take special measures: treat the animal with special means against ticks - they are sold in large quantities and in different forms. It is only important to read the instructions carefully before using any pesticides. In addition, excellent remedies for ixodid ticks are anti-parasitic collars. They are also available at any pet store.
The fight against ixodid ticks also involves the adoption of measures for the absolute elimination of the parasite. ForFor these purposes, a tick removed from the skin must not only be thrown away, but doused with boiling water or kerosene - this will destroy it.
Tick removal
Of course, it's best to have the tick pulled out by a professional. However, it is not always possible to immediately go to the clinic, and procrastination is literally like death. That is why it is important to know how to properly remove the tick yourself.
There are several ways. The first is manual. It is the most unreliable, since there is a high risk of tearing the parasite - and in this case, his head will remain in the body of the victim. When pulling out a tick with your hands, you need to take it not by the lower part, but by the place where the head connects to the body. No need to pull sharply - on the contrary, making rotational movements, as if unscrewing a screw, you need to slowly, carefully remove the parasite. After that, you must make sure that the wound is clean and there is no head left in it, and only then you can treat the affected area with any antiseptic.
Another way to remove a tick is with tweezers. It is necessary to get it in exactly the same way as with the actions of the hands. In addition, you can use a thread, but a certain skill is required here. The thread must be strong so as not to break. She should grab the body of the ixodid tick, throwing a loop on it like a lasso, and gently unscrew it from the wound with the same rotational movements. This method will require more time - and therefore patience.
You can also get a tick with vegetable oil, petroleum jelly or any other handyoil based products. It must be poured / smeared on the lower part of the tick - it breathes with it, so that its airways become blocked and it crawls out on its own. After removing the tick, it is best not to kill it, but take it to the clinic for analysis - in order to know for sure whether it was infected or not.
Interesting facts
- Ticks are one of the oldest representatives of living beings on Earth.
- After mating the ixodid ticks, the male dies, while the female, after laying eggs, dies too.
- Their mating usually takes place on the victim's body.
- The section that studies ticks is called acarology.
- Ticks are the most common carrier of encephalitis.
Thus, ixodid ticks in animals are no less dangerous than in humans. It is necessary to be extremely attentive both to yourself and to your pets, and then all misfortunes will bypass you.
