Syracuse, NY – Start with your thighs as you check your body for signs for ticks.
That’s the most likely place to find signs, according to a survey by Upstate Medical University’s tick-borne disease laboratory.
Of the 748 black-legged ticks sent this spring and summer that were attached to humans, nearly 16% of them were removed from the thigh. Another 7% was removed from the body.
“Ticks like to feed the human body in places where it is moist and warm,” said Saravanan Thangamani, professor of microbiology and immunology at Upstate and director of the SUNY Center for Environmental Health and Medicine. “The tick has evolved to go to places where people can not control themselves so easily.”
Thangamani said it could be an example of natural selection: Ticks that attach to humans in hard spots were more likely to survive and pass that trait on to their offspring.
Upstate’s Citizen Science Tick Testing program, which began last year, added a question in March asking people who emailed wise men to describe where on the body the tick was found. That may come in handy to help people prevent tick bites and the diseases they cause, in particular Lyme disease, Thangamani said.
“Find out where ticks on a human body (let) people check themselves in the right locations when they come from outside,” he said.
Ticks were pulled from other hard-to-see locations, including the scalp, armpits, abdomen and back knee. Fewer but still significant numbers were found in places that were easier to see, including the chest, waist, upper arm and wrist. As the image below shows, signs in Central New York were worn almost everywhere on the body.
Ticks with black-legged, like hearts, can carry multiple diseases, including Lyme, anaplasmosis, miyamotoi and the rare but potentially fatal Powassan virus. Nymphs bite and remain attached to the body for three to five days, while adults can be on the body for a week or more, Thangamani said. Breeds for adults are larger and therefore easier to find and remove, but are more likely to carry disease than nymphs.
The Upstate survey also received a combined 301 lone star and dog ticks that had been reported to humans. Both types of ticks were also often found on the thighs, but the dog carcass seems to have the preference for the scalp: About a third of them were found there.
Neither the dog nor the lone stingray transmits the Lyme bacterium, but they can transmit other diseases. Lone starlings can also cause a severe allergy to red meat.
Experts say that the sooner you pick up a tick, the lower the chance of getting sick. Use a pair of fine-tipped tweezers to slowly pull the tick out of your skin.
The civic science program encourages New Yorkers to send emails with buses found on their bodies as pets, or simply crawling in their backyards. Since its launch in the summer of 2019, the lab has received and tested more than 5,200 signs. Thangamani said the information gathered from submitted signs will help scientists understand the spread of signs and their diseases.
To date, 29% of submitted dogs have one or more bacteria or viruses caused by disease. The most common is the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, which was found in about 27% of ticks with black bone, like hearts.
Experts say that preventing tick bites is the most important way to be free from disease. Thangamani recommends spraying clothing with the pesticide permethrin and using DEET or other insect repellent on the skin.
If you find a tick and want to find out if it carries a disease, you can mail it to the lab. Fill out a click submission form first, and you will receive results via email. The service is free.
Upstate Medical University has compiled a list of Central New Yorkers of the most common places on the human body where ticks hook.
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