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RandomFactor [soylentnews.org] writes:

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 [livescience.com]:

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 [facebook.com]

Nightmare inducing images here [facebook.com] and here [fbcdn.net].

A similar nightmare inducing polyticks infestation here [flickr.com]

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 [go.com].

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.

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