Alberta ticks cling on through wintry weather

After the apocalypse, it is said, only cockroaches will crawl the earth.

You may want to put the Canadian tick into that category as well.

Even the snow, ice and sleet of an Edmonton autumn are no match for some these blood-thirsty creatures.

A number of the spider-like insects, which love to burrow into human skin, are still active in Alberta.

• Mild winter will bring ticks out early in Alberta

Even with an early October cold-snap, and the recent snowfall, engorged ticks are still attaching themselves to people and pets in the river valley, city parks and forested areas.

Unseasonably warm weather over the last month extended tick season by a few weeks, said Pete Heule, an entomologist at the Royal Alberta Museum.

"We've got one of the largest green spaces in North America running through our city, so it's not as hard for Edmontonians to find ourselves in places where we may encounter these ticks," Huele said in an interview with CBC Radio's Edmonton AM. 

"You do need to watch out when you're in an even vaguely-forested area."  

And while Heule says while most species of the blood-suckers, including the disease-carrying black-legged tick, will soon die off this winter, there is one variety of tick which can withstand even the coldest of Canadian winters.

• Moose-killing winter tick population growing in Quebec

The winter tick, or moose tick, is a mite that mostly feed on moose. It differs from other ticks in terms of its impressive size. By the end of each winter, they measure up to 15 millimetres.

"It's probably a winter tick, if it's biting this time of year," Heule said.

"It's always hard to tell. We have a few things out there that go after critters, but it's a pretty good chance, at this time of year, that's what's biting."

 

The winter tick lays its eggs in June. They hatch in the late summer, and then the "little guys begin to search for their first host," Huele said.

The winter tick  goes through several life phases while on the moose or deer through the winter. After mating, which takes place at the end of winter, the blood-filled females drop to the ground to lay their eggs and die.

In years when infestations are significant, thousands of ticks may attack a single moose, causing problems such as weight loss and mange-like symptoms for severely-affected animals.

Contrary to the black-legged tick, which can transmit Lyme disease, the winter tick does not carry diseases that can be transmitted to humans, and they prefer the taste of moose blood. 

"In most of the cases, they wouldn't intentionally latch onto a human. We're not the right size or type of host," Heule said.

" But if they get knocked off — with the unseasonably warm weather, I'm sure it could be screwing up some of the life cycles of other animals — and once they start getting hungry, and they can't find what they're looking for, that's when they'll start looking for other things."