Name: Why Ticks Are So Hard To Kill
Uploaded: 2020-11-02T18:16:14.000Z
Duration: 6 min 23 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Basic passive voice

a bull was found dead on a farm in North Carolina.

an army of more than 1,000 Asian longhorned ticks.

of about 90 tick species found in the US.

All of them suck blood, all of them can carry disease,

and all of them are incredibly difficult to kill.

The Asian longhorned tick is truly a villainous pest.

but it can also clone itself over and over again.

it's crawled its way to at least 12 other states.

This looks like the Asian longhorned tick to me.

a disease ecologist at Columbia University.

Tufts: So, this is what we call a drag cloth,

and it's a meter by meter, so a meter squared.

is we just walk at a nice, even, slow pace

And we'll stop every about 20 meters or so,

and we'll look for whatever ticks are on the backside.

Jones: Contrary to what many people believe,

So many ticks in this forest. Tufts: Oh, yeah.

Tufts: Ticks are what we call sit-and-wait predators,

where they climb up to the top of the blades of grass

And at the top of their arms they have little sticky pads.

And those pads will get attracted to this.

And this is how they get stuck on your pants

when they stick their hands up like this?

Tufts: We call that questing or host-seeking.

Jones: Yeah, ticks are literally on a quest for blood!

And they've mastered the art of extracting it,

it sneaks into a concealed crevice, like your armpit.

And after that, it uses two horrifying hooklike structures

to tear into your flesh and keep from falling off.

Then, they insert what is basically a straw

covered in spikes, like a piece of barbed wire,

And this sounds like it would hurt, a lot.

But ticks have another trick up their sleeve,

It's a tick's ultimate weapon to avoid detection.

so the wound is less likely to get red or itchy.

That's why ticks can stay in you undetected for days,

even as they grow to several times their normal size.

And if you do find a tick in time to get it off,

for as long as two years without a blood meal.

And they're also masters of the elements.

They can tolerate long periods of drought,

So, yeah, flushing them down the toilet or sink

Tufts: If you put them in the sink, sometimes

Jones: Now, all of this wouldn't be such a big problem

if it weren't for the diseases they carry.

they transmit at least 16 diseases to humans.

That's more than any other insect, including mosquitoes.

infects an estimated 300,000 Americans each year.

In 2004, there were about 23,000 cases of tick-borne disease

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Why Ticks Are So Hard To Kill

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