Climate Change Enters Its Blood-Sucking Phase
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
This article is much too long in my opinion, but here is the gist of the topic.
The moose tick, a.k.a. the winter tick—or Dermacentor albipictus , to use its aptly sinister, Potteresque Latin name—feeds on almost every mammal across the reasonably wet parts of North America. But it has an outsize effect on moose. Its life cycle in the northern New England climate is fairly simple. In April, female ticks who have feasted on moose over the winter take their last blood meal and drop off into the leaf litter to deposit several thousand eggs apiece. In May, as the forest starts to leaf out, these eggs release tiny, six-legged larvae called seed ticks. Over the summer, they live on the nutrients from their mothers’ winter feast. Around September, these seed ticks start to form loose groups of up to 1,000, which then climb trees or shrubs up to heights of about four to six feet. There, these groups of poppy-seed-sized ticks, having linked their tiny limbs to form long, almost invisible chains, go out on a branch and, as tick biologists call it, “quest.” They simply wait, and when a big, tall, blood-filled mammal walks by and brushes the branch, one or more of the ticks grasps the animal’s fur and holds tight while the rest of the gang swings as a gossamer-thin thread onto the animal. Then they separate, spread out, follow fur to skin, and dig in.
Two main factors influence how many of these ticks a New England moose will pick up in any given year and area. The biggest factor is the weather from roughly October 1 to January 1, when the seed ticks are questing. A lot of cold and snow during that period, especially early on—normal weather for moose terrain—decimates questing ticks, so that wandering moose are apt to pick up only a few hundred.
The second crucial factor is moose density—that is, how many moose live in a given area and distribute in spring the pregnant tick females whose young will quest in the fall. More wandering moose per square mile increases not just the number of eggs laid, but the number of places they are laid—and thus the number of times that any given wandering moose will encounter questing ticks. When moose are many and winter late, young calves will meet far, far more strands of questers than usual—entire curtains of them—and end up carrying anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 through the winter.
Tick loads so large are unique to moose, perhaps because moose live almost exclusively in places where warm winters are rare, and have developed no defense against such infestations. Unlike their white-tailed deer cousins and most other furry mammals (including humans) that range more widely, moose don’t groom one another, and they are not habitual or “obligate” groomers; they groom only themselves, and only when heavily infested. By that time, alas, the ticks are on to stay. In a warm fall, then, a dense moose population seems to prime tick populations for an explosion, and calves for a slow, sucking slaughter in the coming winter.
To the dismay of Cedric Alexander, Jake Debow, Pete Pekins, and many others, such winters became far more common just as moose were growing denser than ever through much of their upper New England range. In the mild, late-coming winters of 2008 and 2011, moose biologists in all three northern New England states, now on the alert, saw signs of more ticks and higher calf mortality. By 2013, New Hampshire and Maine had started an updated, five-year version of the earlier winter moose-collaring study, which Vermont joined in 2015. It is for this study that Jake Debow and Josh Blouin are doing field autopsies on dead, collared moose calves.
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There are millions of processes and species interactions going on all around us every day. Evolution occurs in super, super, super slow motion. Climate change in fractions of degrees Kelvin.
Changes in gravity, the magnetic field, the speed of the rotation of the earth as the moon 'drifts' away from the earth 3.8 centimeters a year, gradually changing the tides.
Are the moose calves dying because of climate change per se, or are the ticks just winning a battle at the edge of the territories moose are coming back to?
The ebb and flow of the tides of life?
How much does 100 years of data mean on a planet that has been teeming with life for 4 billion years?
root cause is ovepopulation
of the ticks or the Bullwinkles?
A moose once bit my sister...
No realli! She was Karving her initials on the moose with the sharpened end of an interspace toothbrush given her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian movies: "The Hot Hands of an Oslo Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Molars of Horst Nordfink"...
Mynd you, moose bites Kan be pretti nasti...
I was walking away from a horse once with an empty feed bucket and he started pushing me towards the feed bin.
I tried to continue at my own pace so he bit me on the back of the arm to make me drop the bucket.
Well I picked up the bucket and hit him square in the face with it.
and it rebounded right back into my face.
And I swear we both stood there and laughed at each other for a few minutes.
then I went and got him another bucket of oats,
but he never bit me again, lol.
Oh man horse bites are nasty, too. I once had one mistake one of my fingers for a carrot. I thought I was going to lose the finger.
There's only one thing in my experience worse than being ninja kicked in the gonads
and believe me when I tell you that horses are not just sentient but cogent.
He knew not to grab the bicep, but just the flesh behind it, which remained black and blue for months.....
Witnesses described the attack as deft.
I LOL'd!
Did you just trade place with Bad Fish?
Aren't moose ruminants? If so they don't have upper teeth
No, I think most are registered Independent.
What becomes of the ticks' cycle when the moose population collapses? Are there adequate substitute carriers? What species?
I wonder if they could feed the moose some sort of medication. Make them more tick resistant.
Interesting subject. I just read in local news how the polar vortex killed off lots of invasive species.
The article picture looks more like an insect blowing cold on the deer (moose?) than sucking its blood.
I think its supposed to be a Moose in the tick's "sight".
Surely as a Canadian you can tell the difference between the silhouette of a male moose and a male deer?
It may surprise you to know that except in a zoo I have never seen a moose or a male deer (unless it was one whose antlers had not yet grown).
That, I should say, is sad.
You had a lake side home and all...
I can't tell you how many deer I've seen or hit in the lower 48.
Moose, a few, turned around a drove in the opposite direction, lol.