Eckert: Ticks make you
nervous? You need
more coyotes
Yes, I find myself checking for ticks more often
this year. And I’m finding more, too.
My wife swears I’m not afraid of anything. “You
ride your bike in the street,” she tells me.
Ticks, though, give me the heebie-jeebies.
Dodging pickups on Pine Grove Avenue is
no big deal; finding a tick gives me chills.
American researchers are saying we are seeing more
ticks more often in more places because of changes
in climate and weather. In Michigan, we used to see
ticks for a month or so centered around May. This year,
I picked up my first one in April and the most recent a
couple of weeks ago.
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| Eastern Fisher |
Milder winters are starting them up early and wetter
springs and summers are leaving them in the tall
grass and brush longer than in previous years.
More ticks, then, means greater risk of a host of
tick-borne diseases, including the Lyme disease
that is spreading through the west side of the
Lower Peninsula.
Coyote
But a Dutch researcher has found another factor
that may be in play.
Tim R. Hofmeester, at Wageningen University in
the Netherlands, apparently has a better tolerance
for ticks than I do. Even after taking all the standard
precautions, he had to remove more than 100
ticks from his body while doing his research.
What he did was mice, ticks and predators in
different parts of the Dutch countryside. Lyme
disease gets to humans from ticks who have
fed on infected mice. Hofmeester’s theory was
that areas with high numbers of foxes and
martens, a predator in the weasel family,
would have fewer mice and fewer infected ticks.
He did more than count animals and collect
thousands of mice and ticks. He set up dozens
of cameras to record their behavior
Red Fox.
Between the cameras and his own arithmetic,
Hofmeester learned his original theory was
wrong. Predators do have a huge impact on
the number of infected ticks, but not the way
he supposed.
Foxes and martens do suppress mouse numbers,
but not as much as they prevent infected ticks.
The predators kill and eat some of the mice
and make the survivors jumpy.
Bobcat
Bobcat
Nervous mice tend to stay home. Mice that stay
home don’t run into ticks, don’t provide food for
the next generation of ticks and don’t become
infected with Lyme disease. Areas with the most
predator activity had almost the same number
of mice as areas without predators, but had
one-fifth as many ticks and one-eighth as many
infected ticks.
“This is the first paper to empirically show that
predators are good for your health with respect
to tick-borne pathogens,” Taal Levi, an ecologist
at Oregon State University who was not involved
in the study, told the New York Times.
Gray Fox
Gray Fox
Levi points out that nothing else — culling deer,
killing mice, spraying pesticides — has had an
effect on tick numbers or tick-borne diseases
that comes even close to Hofmeester’s findings.
This is going to be another reason I always root
for the predators.
And why I’ll be happy the next time I find coyote
tracks or hear a fox yipping in my neighborhood.
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