New Research Shows How Static Electricity Helps Ticks Find Their Hosts
Ticks are notorious for spreading harmful diseases, and most people try to avoid them at all costs. However, two scientists recently embarked on a peculiar mission to collect as many bloodsucking ticks as possible. Sam England, a biologist at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, and Katie L. Lihou, a veterinary parasitologist at the University of Bristol, wanted to combine their research on ticks and electricity. Their efforts led to a groundbreaking discovery that could improve antistatic tick defenses.
In a paper published in the journal Current Biology, the scientists reveal how static electricity aids ticks in finding their hosts. They demonstrate that the static electric fields naturally produced by animals, including humans, can physically attract ticks to their hosts. This knowledge not only adds to the list of ticks’ attributes but also provides an opportunity to develop better defenses against them.
While many tick researchers have observed ticks being flung about by static from plastic or nylon equipment, they never considered it to be more than a nuisance. However, Dr. England and Dr. Lihou decided to investigate further by simulating the conditions ticks face when searching for a blood meal. They placed ticks on a grounding plate and passed an electrode, charged to 750 volts, just three millimeters above them. This voltage is similar to that of a typical mammal’s electric field. The ticks were consistently pulled upward toward the electrode, mimicking their response to a host.
To understand the implications of this phenomenon in nature, Dr. England created a computer model of the electrical field around a cow. The model showed that the static charge of a passing bovine could exert a considerable attractive force on ticks searching for food on nearby grass blades. Another experiment found that extreme surface charges – up to 30 kilovolts, theoretically possible in humans – could attract ticks several centimeters away.
Surprisingly, ticks were found to be attracted to both positive and negative electric fields, suggesting that they are polarized in some way. However, the exact mechanism of this polarization is still unknown.
While the results of the study are fascinating, Dr. Sukanya Narasimhan, a biologist at Yale University, cautions that it is essential to confirm these findings with live hosts outside the lab. Dr. England suggests an amusing experiment involving sheep going through a “carwash of antistatic spray” to further investigate the role of static electricity in the tick life cycle.
Regardless, Dr. England believes that static electricity plays a significant role in ticks’ ability to find hosts. He emphasizes that whether in the field or the lab, “the physics doesn’t change.” This newfound understanding may ultimately lead to innovative methods of protecting against ticks and the diseases they carry.