#196 – What Makes US Tick

There are a lot of weird Tick stories in the news lately.  From stories of exsanguinated cows in North Carolina to books about government conspiracy and bioweapons testing of ticks as delivery vehicles for disease, it seems everybody’s trying to latch onto tick and tick-borne disease stories. Acarologist Dr. Danielle Tufts, visits with us to help debunk some of the outright myths about ticks, to tell us more about how these diseases are transferred, and to get a better grip on how frightened we should be, and what we can do to protect ourselves from the millions of tiny vampires waiting out there.

Photos of tick lifecycle and academic articles on relevant tick species are attached to the show notes.

Some terms from the show you might not be familiar with:

Serology – the scientific study or diagnostic examination of blood serum, especially with regard to the response of the immune system to pathogens or introduced substances.

We discuss three types of chromosomal polyploidy:

Diploid – containing two complete sets of chromosomes

Triploid – containing three complete sets of chromosomes

Aneuploid – contains an abnormal number of chromosomes

I’m skeptical of the content of these two books, but they are the source of a lot of the current concern about tick conspiracy: