Flea, Tick & Pest Center

Ticks have three things on their minds: biting, blood and growing.

• To move through its four life stages, a tick must have a nice big meal of blood.
• Because they ingest blood, they can easily transmit disease from animal to animal or human to human. A tick in any stage of development can spread disease.
• When it is ready to move to the next stage, the tick will bite its victim (usually painlessly), bury its head under the skin and stay this way from several hours to several days.
• Adult female ticks feed on an animal or human and in some cases, increase their size up to 100 times their original weight!
• After this giant meal, the female mates, falls off the host and lays her eggs, starting the cycle over again.

Stage 1 – The Eggs
Ticks begin as eggs that hatch into 6-legged larvae.

Stage 2 – The Larva
Larvae live and feed on animals (mice, deer, squirrels, livestock, and any humans who enter the tick habitat) for about a week before detaching then molting (shedding) anywhere from 1 week to 8 months later. The larvae then become 8-legged nymphs.

Stage 3 – The Nymph
Nymphs feed on animals, engorge for 3 to 11 days, detach, and molt about a month later (depending on the species and environmental conditions).

Stage 4 – The Adults
Once the nymph molts, it becomes an adult tick (male or female). Ticks climb up grass and plants and hold their legs up “sensing” and “looking” for their prey. Ticks are attracted to their hosts by detecting carbon dioxide and heat through special organs located on the first pair of the tick’s legs (Haller’s organs). When a warm-blooded animal walks past, the tick can crawl onto them and begins feeding.