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Hello and welcome, My name is Marc and today we are on the coast of Ecuador.
Now obviously this guy is not a tick, this is a crab who is digging a hole, and my initial
idea was to film these guys going about their business but i ran into a small problem.
That is our dog tasha and she was just obsessed with hunting the crabs when she found out
they were there. Cattle also didnt help with my filming and of course with cattle come
along parasites in particular this tiny little parasite the blood sucking tick. A ticks goal
in life is to climb to a little stem of grass and then quest for an animal to come past
and grab on to it and hitch a ride it will then climb down through the fur and the hair
and find a nice was spot such as an armpit or an ear where it can burrow its face into
the skin and then start sucking the animals blood. Of course Tasha got covered in them.
OK because we check our dogs every day all of those ticks that we found on Tasha were
quite easy to remove. We found about 20 in all and I put a few of them aside for the
next section. I'm not going to show any footage of them burrowing into the skin and actually
inflating and filling with blood and stuff, you can do a google image search for ticks
and you will get lots of gory pictures to look at if you want to see that. What I have
done some people may think this cruel but its not I've actually glued a little tick
to the end of this hypodermic needle it a not toxic glue and he is still alive and what
I have is a macro setup a super macro setup which should give us some really close in
pictures of this little critter here. so lets have a look at some of the features that let
him do what he does really really well. and that is climbing onto animals and sucking
their blood. lets go. how awesome is that? all this movement I'm
pretty sure is a reflex action just so he can flip himself back over but obviously he
is not going to be able to do that because he is glued down. you can see on the top of
his head there those two black dots they look like whats left to be eyes the have obviously
evolved away he doesn't need eyes any more maybe they can just sense light. Now underneath
and to the side you can see how his skin is really white and kind of wrinkly. This is
where he inflates and his whole back half of his body can fill with blood and that white
skin can stretch a huge amount just google ticks again and have a look some of the images
of an inflated tick and the size difference is enormous. you can also see how he is moving
head back and forth there that neck can only move one way and that makes it mechanically
strong and once his head is in there if you have ever tried to pull one off they are incredibly
hard to pull out and that movement allows if say an animal is scratching or something
like that it will help prevent the tick becoming dislodged easily. Now this is amazing look
at that. Look at those two bits on the side of his head they just stick out there and
they have got little hairs on them are they sensory? I dont know what they are little
anchors. and what is that part in the middle there is that tongue? wow check that out so
what does he do does he push his head in there and open those jaws to start everything bleeding
and then suck it out with the middle? I'm not sure exactly how it is done. Under his
armpits there do you think those wedge type structures are used to push in the opposite
direction so he can push his head into the flesh just an idea but it might be what they
are for. I have seen these guys climb glass and with those two little hooks on the end
there you can see the curved pad underneath they must be the perfect foot for attaching
themselves to smooth surfaces and hair for that matter with those two little claws. Remember
I am just speculating here so if you have any other opinions or you know a bit more
about this than I do please let me know in the comments below. I've really enjoyed watching
these little monsters that we found by the seaside and they are just absolutely amazing
little creatures kind of disgusting but still amazing in their own little way. Now if you
would like to see more please subscribe. the next video i've no idea what it is going to
be it is going to be whatever I feel like doing or whatever i feel interesting. it will
be some sort of little creatures or big creatures, who knows. The name of the channel is biodiversity
shorts and please subscribe below. Thanks for watching.