What does a deer tick look like?
The first thing to remember about deer ticks is that they come in three different sizes and color patterns, depending on which stage of their lifecycle you’re looking at. Just as humans have successive life stages (e.g., child, adolescent, adult), a deer tick hatches from its egg as a light tan, translucent larva (about the size of a period in newsprint), molts into a blackish nymph (about the size of a poppy seed), and eventually molts a second time into a brick-red adult female (about the size of a sesame seed) or a black adult male (slightly smaller than the female). Improved photo images of the deer tick’s three life stages and other species of ticks for comparison will soon be posted on this web site.
