What Do Ticks Look Like?

Series Summary

Insects are small invertebrate animals that can be real pests. Including flies, fleas, ticks and cockroaches, bugs tend to annoy humans with their bites, stings and buzzing. However, each insect plays an important role in nature, whether it be to pollinate flowers, produce honey or prey on other pests. All in all, some insects can be quite beneficial to nature's cycle. In this free video series, an entomologist provides information on identifying a variety of insects and bugs. Discover what ticks, earwigs and fleas look like. Learn how to identify queen ants, maggots, beetles and bed bugs as well. With these entomology tips, anyone can tell the difference between a cockroach and a water bug.

Video Transcript

"I'm Mike Quinn, I've been an entomologist for twenty years and we're here in Austin, Texas talking about what do ticks look like. Basically ticks, one of the most distinctive features of them is that they have eight legs. They're flattened. They can be as small as three millimeters and after taking a blood meal and becoming engorged, they can swell up to as much as thirty millimeters in length. And they're flattened and generally pear shaped with eight legs and they can be brown to red and sometimes have a variety of white markings. There's about eight species across North America. And the small size and typically if we find them attached to ourselves or our pets and if we see those eight legs then we know that's a tick that we've found."