No they don’t! Ticks certainly do not jump! Tick stages — larvae, nymphs, and adults — feed on a host for a few days and then fall off and wait, usually for weeks to months, for the next host. The larval and nymph stages moult to the next stage, while the female adults lay hundreds to thousands of eggs after falling off the host.

So what? Well, with Lyme disease, most transmission occurs in summer months when the nymphs are most plentiful. These ticks become infected as larvae feeding on infected small mammals, like the white footed mouse. In the autumn, adult ticks can be found in abundance searching for their favorite host, white tailed deer. These also can transmit disease, but they are easier to spot on us because they are larger.

Of course, different ticks transmit different diseases, and the most dangerous can be infections that can pass from adults to larvae through the eggs (like Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever). The abundance and tiny size of the larvae makes them a potentially huge threat!