July 3, 2023 – It turns out that some people really are tick magnets.
Researchers have discovered that ticks can defy gravity in their quest to latch onto people and animals. The key is static electricity, just like when someone rubs a balloon and things stick to it.
The study was published Friday in the journal Current Biology. In the first phase of the research, scientists exposed ticks to furry rabbit feet and to acrylic surfaces that each had electrostatic charges.
“Ticks were readily attracted across air gaps of up to several millimeters or centimeters onto these statically charged surfaces,” the authors wrote. “This establishes that electrostatic attraction of ticks onto hosts can take place over large air gaps of many body lengths of a tick.”
In a second part of the study, the researchers created computer models simulating the electrostatic charges that exist in environments where both ticks and mammals are found. In one simulation, the researchers observed that the body parts of a cow with the most electric charge were the nose, tail, and legs, which are the body parts most likely to be encountered by a tick. They also found that the vegetation near the animal had a strong electric field that is just a few millimeters wide.
In a final phase of the study, the researchers conducted laboratory experiments in which they re-created the electric field conditions from the computer model and successfully lifted some ticks across an air gap, although some ticks did not make the full leap if they were observed to be resisting.
The authors noted that their findings could be applied to developing new tick prevention strategies, such as designing clothing that resists electrostatic charges or spraying livestock.