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A carpet python from Coolangatta that was fished out of a backyard swimming pool on January 9th by a professional snake catcher was a Lovecraftian horror. According to this article:
A snake that was recently captured near a suburban home in Queensland, Australia, was covered with hundreds upon hundreds of ticks. So many of the bloodsucking parasites clung to the snake that the unfortunate reptile looked like it was wearing a second coat of living scales.
Currumbin Wildlife Hospital Foundation in Queensland reported that 511 ticks in total were removed from the python.
Facebook page here
Nightmare inducing images here and here.
A similar nightmare inducing polyticks infestation here
An extreme infestation such as this likely happened because the snake was already sick, likely with a compromised immune system, Emily Taylor, a professor of biological sciences at California Polytechnic State University, told Live Science. When a tick bites an animal and injects anticoagulants from its saliva, the animal sets off an immune response that can kill the tick or slow down its feeding. However, if an animal's immune response is dampened, "you may see a greater number of ticks feeding or concluding their feeding," Taylor said.
Rebecca Trout Fryxell, an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture adds
sated female ticks can lay thousands of eggs. If the eggs are fertilized, this can blanket the host with more hungry mouths to feed.
Robots are always the answer.
Although now tick free, Nike, as the python has been named, is still suffering from anemia and "a nasty infection" but it is intended to return him to the wild once he fully recovers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @06:50AM (6 children)
There are special Internet publications that specialize in shocking, revolting content. I do not see why this article should be on this site.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday January 16 2019, @08:14AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0, Troll) by aristarchus on Wednesday January 16 2019, @09:20AM (2 children)
There is no such vote. The best you can do is to spam mod the TMB. I did it once, and it felt wonderful, almost as good as noodling catfish. But short of that, there is no way to keep the editors from driving the site into the ground, but not getting humor, by humoring the alt-right, and by putting up with The Mighty Buzzard, whose blog this is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @09:32AM (1 child)
How does one noodle a catfish?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @11:22AM
You'll have to PM TMB for that, I'm afraid.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aiwarrior on Wednesday January 16 2019, @11:08AM
This is a wild life/biology/science article it certainly is intereseting. It does not include gore nor anything shocking unless you click on it.
Just because you find ticks gross, and i do also, it does not detract the knowledge that, for example snakes are also affected by ticks. I did not know that.
There is even expert insight of the field in the article. You should vote on your own mouse click, do not impose yourself on others please
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Wednesday January 16 2019, @11:37AM
Yeah, that last image was over the top. *shudder*
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды