A tick is an external parasite that must necessarily hold blood and suck blood without showing host selectivity. In our country, the tick is also known among the people with names such as “sakırga”, “young”, “kerni”. Turkey, a country that is very rich in terms of fauna ticks. Many of the approximately 900 tick species known in the world are found in our country.
The bodies of ticks consist of one piece and there are mouth organelles in front of them. Ticks hold their hosts and insert their mouth organelles into the skin, where they suck blood from the same place until they are fixed and filled. While some tick species absorb a large amount of blood in a very short period of time, some ticks require between a few days and a few weeks to saturate, while others change and develop periods during this period.
Although ticks have long been known to be associated with certain diseases in animals, their relationship with diseases in humans has been revealed in the 1980s. Different types of ticks can infect some pathogens that can cause disease in humans. The main diseases transmitted from ticks to humans can be listed as Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (KKKA), Lyme disease, Q fever, Tick-borne encephalitis, Mediterranean spotted fever, Monocytic erlyhiosis, Granulocytic erlihiosis, Babesiosis.
