In Praise of Ticks

Dr. Cornelius B. Philip of the U.S. Public Health Service has spent a lifetime studying ticks. Like many a biologist who has an intimate understanding of an alien species, Dr. Philip seems to sympathize with his little associates. Ticks are neither beautiful nor intelligent, he reports in Scientific Monthly, but they have a rugged persistence which Dr. Philip admires.

Men have complained about ticks since Homer's time. The worst thing they do is spread disease, but even this trait is not always considered a disservice. Certain death-dealing ticks of Madagascar are encouraged to live in native villages. The local people become immune to their bites, and their presence discourages raiders.

Dr. Philip boasts of the quantity of "Q fever" germs that one of his favorite ticks often contains. The juice of this tick can be diluted 500 billion times and still carry the disease.

The ancients believed, says Dr. Philip, that mashed ticks were a useful aphrodisiac, and Pliny the Elder recommended tick blood as a depilatory and as a curative ointment. There may be something to this. Recent tick-workers have shown that ticks contain an antibiotic that inhibits the growth of many bacteria.

Homeless ticks drifting slowly toward the smell of food are rather pathetic creatures, but once they have pushed their barbed beaks deep into blood-rich flesh, they grow fat, conservative and greedy.

An array of dug-in ticks can kill a jack rabbit by drinking nearly all of its blood.

An established tick, Dr. Philip explains, is so pleased with his situation that almost nothing will force him to let go. He will hang on grimly, even while being killed by insecticides. He can drop away any time he wants to, but if pulled roughly he is apt to commit suicide by abandoning his mouth-parts.

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