It is not uncommon for outdoor adventure enthusiasts to stumble upon dead animals while out and about in nature. However, it is not often that you see a dead moose being consumed by hundreds of thousands of ticks. Unfortunately, for the past several years, these macabre sightings of mutilated moose have only been increasing. The culprits in these numerous moose murders happen to be the dreaded tick.
Moose are regarded as majestic animals by many citizens of the Northern regions of the United States. The classic image of a moose standing proudly amongst the many beauties of nature could be considered a personification of northern pride. Given the reverence people have towards moose, the many grizzly sightings of moose corpses are only making people hate ticks more than ever.
Experts claim that these moose are being killed by mass amounts of ticks that are surviving the mild winters as a result of rising global temperatures. Sadly, calves are the most vulnerable to these mass tick attacks, and the recovered moose corpses are often drained of blood, indicating a heavy tick presence.
Researchers claim that over seventy percent of calves that the researches had tagged beforehand ended up dying as a result of bloodthirsty ticks.
Winter ticks are undeniably nasty creatures as they attach themselves to their victims in the thousands, and remain attached during the tick’s entire life cycle. The ticks are so numerous that the amount of blood that they consume from their victims is so abundant that moose cannot produce enough proteins to sustain their bodily functions. This process, of course, results in a rather unpleasant and short death for moose. Researchers are adamant that these extremely numerous tick populations are abnormal and an inevitable result of global warming.
Do you think that it is possible for these abnormally high tick populations to be caused by an environmental factor that is not a result of human activity?
