Miscellaneous Photo 10

Mass of ticks on ear of severely infested moose in April.
Such moose often host in excess of 80,000 ticks. The large 'grapes' are the blood-engorged adult
female ticks, the life stage that consumes a lot of blood. She feeds in order to produce eggs;
the more blood taken, the more eggs laid. One finds adults on moose in late March and throughout
April (each female only feeds for a few days), then they drop from the moose and lay their eggs
in the vegetation at the end of May to early June.

Photo and text by Bill Samuel, University of Alberta, Canada