Maine Fact or Fiction: Can Ticks Really Regrow Their Bodies?

Allow me shake my can at the sky, furiously...

I'm not sure what the real answer is for why ticks have become such an issue the last several years. When I was a kid, we literally would roll around in grass and leaves that were taller than us, we'd crawl endlessly through the woods, and never once did I find a tick on my body. Nor did any of my friends.

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But these days, it's not uncommon to take your dog on a walk almost anywhere, and pull several ticks off you and/or the dog. It's so common, it's just become part of pet ownership. But there's also a metric ton of misinformation about ticks out there, as well. For instance, you'll almost never feel a tick bite you, but it's usually not until they're well under your skin. Although people say different... (insert vomit emoji here...) But here's my new favorite:

A tick can grow a whole new body if it breaks off while you remove it.

My father-in-law showed up at my house recently, and he had a tick embedded on his arm that he hadn't noticed. He lives out the woods and has a dog, so it's not hard to imagine where it came from. But as my wife removed it, he swore up and down that if we didn't get it all, it would regrow a whole new body. (again, insert vomit emoji here...)

Naturally, I didn't believe this for a second, but I still had to look it up. Because if he was right, then ticks are automatically the scariest pest on the planet, hands down. But thankfully, that's just an old wive's tale. Ticks absolutely CANNOT grow a new body. In fact, quite the opposite. If the body breaks off, it will die instantly, according to TickSafety.com.

More absolute hogwash when it comes to ticks...

Ticks do not die each winter, like you've been led to believe. They will come out of nowhere if there's an open patch of ground and it warms up at all. One of those magical 50 degree January thaw days is a perfect example. You'll get them then, for sure. Also, ticks do no lay eggs inside you.

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They lay them on the ground under cover. Your skin is not the right kind of cover, you're all good. Like anything that is gross, there's often a lot of misinformation out there. But at least knowing ticks can't grow a whole new body gives me some faith that Mother Nature isn't always just trying to scare us to death, just completely gross us out.