Jim mentions how breathing or blowing on them can cause ticks to drop off your body. I have noticed this also works similarly with wasps and hornets. If they try to share my outdoor meal, a little puff in their direction seems to repel them more definitively than arm and hand waving. Maybe they associate my bad breath (or CO2) with a potential predator. Has anybody else noticed this? I haven't tried this with mosquitoes, but it probably would have the opposite effect -- they would associate CO2 with a breathing source of blood.
Warren W. Aney Tigard, Oregon -----Original Message----- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ecolo...@listserv.umd.edu] On Behalf Of James J Roper Sent: Monday, 28 June, 2010 08:24 To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] field safety manual for mammal/herp/tick project The manual is good, but there are a few small errors. Tick rain....the manual says that ticks do not fall on passersby, but indeed they do. I have been "colonized" by ticks that way in both Panama and Paraguay. In Paraguay, when the truck I was riding on went under a tick infested branch of tree (actually, the preceding truck) the ticks apparently sense the CO2 and dropped, landing on the people in the back of the truck that followed. It happened more than once and was easily verified. In Panama, I was sitting in the understory waiting while looking up with binoculars. Every now and then, I felt "dust" on my face. I pulled out my compass with mirror and discovered that the dust was ticks. As I plucked them from my face, their numbers were growing, on my face and not by climbing to my face. Finally, I noticed that they were all over my body, so I moved. In the field, I have done the simple experiment. Tick walks up arm or leg or finger. If you merely fan the tick with your hand (passing an air current), they cling, but if you breathe or blow on it, the tick often drops, presumably from "smelling" CO2. Now I have not done this experiment with ticks everywhere, but everywhere I have done it, the ticks respond the same way. Cheers, Jim Diane S. Henshel wrote on 19-Jun-10 14:24: > Thanks for a great start on a manual many will use! > >
