The science is pretty simple. The three species of bacteria (genus Borrelia) that carry Lyme disease tend to live in small rodents. When a tick sucks an infected rodent’s blood, it too becomes infected. And if that itty-bitty tick should someday sink its mouth parts into, say … you or your beloved pet, there’s a chance it’ll slip its new host a shot of that same bacteria. The result? A health condition that causes fever, headaches, depression, joint pain, and heart and central nervous system damage.
But what could help stop this chain of infections? A healthy dose of rodent-loving rattlesnakes! A single timber rattler eats 2,500 to 4,500 ticks a year, according to a new study conducted by Edward Kabay, a recently graduated master’s student in conservation biology at the University of Maryland. (Kabay presented these findings last week at the 98th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America.) When a snake catches a field mouse infected with Lyme, it gobbles up everything: the messenger (the tick), the message-sender (the mouse), and the message itself (the bacteria).
But what could help stop this chain of infections? A healthy dose of rodent-loving rattlesnakes! A single timber rattler eats 2,500 to 4,500 ticks a year, according to a new study conducted by Edward Kabay, a recently graduated master’s student in conservation biology at the University of Maryland. (Kabay presented these findings last week at the 98th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America.) When a snake catches a field mouse infected with Lyme, it gobbles up everything: the messenger (the tick), the message-sender (the mouse), and the message itself (the bacteria).
