Insect Minute - Ticks

This may be the “Insect Minute,” but a tick is no insect! Ticks are a part of the subclass Acari making them close relatives of mites and distantly related to spiders. Ticks have four life stages, beginning as an egg that hatches into a six-legged larva. The six-legged larva immediately sets out to look for an appropriate host to find a blood meal. Ticks, both male and female, need blood to continue to the next stage of development. Once the larva has fed it will molt into an eight-legged nymph which, after feeding, will molt into a reproductive adult.Tick Life Cycle from Centers for Disease Control and PreventionTicks find their hosts through detecting the breath, body odor or body heat of an animal or through questing. When a tick is questing for a host it will climb to the end of a leaf or tip of a blade of grass and hold on tightly with the last two sets of legs and stretch the fore legs out, holding this position until an animal comes by to climb on to. Once the tick is “aboard” i