The «season» for ticks is in full swing. The fact that there are more and more of them in Poland has been talked about for a long time. Few, however, realize what this “more” is. The answer comes from an experiment by a forester who checked how many ticks there was in the forest.
- Ticks are extremely dangerous because more and more of them are carriers of Lyme disease
- The forester, who conducted an interesting experiment in “his” area, counted how many ticks can attack us in an hour and a minute
- The man also advises on what to do to protect yourself from parasites. One way is to avoid specific places where we love to walk
- More information can be found on the Onet homepage
On the Facebook profile of the Zamrzenica Forest District, you can see the experiment of one of the forest rangers. The video was published two years ago, but experts are alarming that there are more and more ticks every year, so the recording remains valid.
For his experiment, the forester chose a “typically tick” surface, one with a lot of mammals, incl. deer, roe deer, wild boar, tall grass and ferns grow. The forester wore ankle boots and light-colored pants that were easy to spot the tick, which not only helped to spot arachnids, but also provided good protection against tick bites.
The rest of the article is available under the video.
The results are surprising
What was the experiment about? The forester decided to collect ticks into a jar for an hour.
In the middle of this time, he had almost 20 ticks in the vessel, which he had picked up straight from his legs. After an hour, it turned out that there were already about 60 ticks in the jar. All but one turned out to be nymphs, that is, young ticks. However, as the forester explains, it does not matter whether the arachnid is mature or not. They all feed on blood, which makes them equally dangerous. «One hour walk, about a tick comes out a minute» — assessed the forester.
«Just as the best protection against a crocodile is not to enter the river with crocodiles, the best protection against a tick is to avoid places where ticks may be present» — the man advises. It is about the already mentioned places with tall grass, ferns and bushes. The forester also recommends avoiding the beaten paths through the game, but choosing paths well-worn by people, where there are not too many plants around.
If you do not feel confident in removing the tick from the skin yourself, obtain a tick removal kit in advance. Having it in your home medicine cabinet, you can quickly and efficiently remove the parasite and reduce the risk of tick-borne disease. You can find a simple set for removing ticks with tweezers at the Medonet Market.
The expert also tells you how to prepare for the walk. In his opinion, you should arm yourself with repellants, i.e. tick repellants, long pants, socks and ankle boots. To repel ticks, use, for example, Antykleszcz – a mix of natural essential oils for ETJA ticks.
Such protection will allow us to reduce the risk of a tick bite, and thus contracting one of the tick-borne diseases: Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis.
We encourage you to listen to the latest episode of the RESET podcast. This time we devote it to ecology. How to be eco and not go crazy? How can we care for our planet on a daily basis? What and how to eat? You will hear about this and many other topics related to ecology in the new episode of our podcast.