The Reason Real-Life ‘Ghost Moose’ Exist Is Scarier Than Any Horror Flick

[Omaha Steve]

(Photo: Wayne Laroche)

http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/12/05/why-moose-hate-climate-change-tens-thousands-ticks-are-attacking-their-bodies?cmpid=tpdaily-eml-2014-12-05

As temperatures warm, ticks are moving north and attacking moose, threatening their survival.

December 05, 2014 By Richard Conniff

Richard Conniff is the author of The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth and other books.


They call them “ghost moose.” These pale beasts have lately come to haunt forests across the northern United States. But they aren’t at all like the revered Kermode bears of Canada, which owe their cream coloring to genetics or, as some First Nations believe, to supernatural powers. Ghost moose are white because of winter ticks. More precisely, they are white because climate change makes them vulnerable to winter ticks.

That may sound crazy at first. To most of us, climate change can seem like an abstraction, with consequences that we may not have to face till some vague time decades or centuries in the future. But the spectacle of a moose with thousands upon thousands of engorged winter ticks clinging to its body has a way of making it seem painfully here and now.

“The ticks cover their bodies like shingles on a roof,” said Kristine Rines, a wildlife biologist and leader of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department’s Moose Project. “Fat, ugly shingles with little creepy wavy legs.”

What’s climate change got to do with it? In the past, winter ticks (Dermacentor albipictus) were mostly found on white-tailed deer, which live in slightly warmer climes farther south. These ticks typically lay their eggs in the spring, and the young develop during the summer. By fall, clusters of tick larvae are waiting in the undergrowth, and when a deer brushes against them, the young ticks latch on. But the deer are used to it. They groom the ticks off themselves while they’re still young and easy to dislodge.

FULL story at link.

[daleanime]

1. kick, kick, kick.....

[liberal_at_heart]

2. aw, that poor creature.

[jwirr]

3. Read not to long ago that the moose are dying - do these ticks carry lyme disease? And is that

what is killing them?

[longship]

4. Looks like a bit of mange, too.

Poor guy.

R&K

[LuvNewcastle]

5. I really am sad for the moose.

Ticks are such nasty creatures. If they perform any legitimate function in life, I'd like to know what it is. When I was a kid, I had a dog when we lived out in the country. She was an outside dog, like most dogs in that area. I was constantly pulling ticks off of her even though I would bathe her and had one of those collars on her. There was an elderly couple who lived nearby and they had an old dog that would get covered with those damned things. She would come to our place sometimes when she really got infested with them and I would have to get them off of her. No telling how much blood those ticks sucked out of that poor dog. I always said after that that if I ever got another dog, I'd keep her indoors. My parents wouldn't have that, so I never got another one.