What are Mites?
Snake mites are small parasitic organisms that utilize the blood of the host organism as their sole food source. How do I identify mites? After handling your boa, you may notice small black “bugs” crawling on your hand. These are mites. It is also common to see them crawling on the head of your animal. If you check the water dish in a mite infested enclosure, you will frequently find mites drowned at the bottom of the dish. Why should I worry about mites? There are two reasons to be alarmed by the presence of mites on your animal: • Mites have a short reproductive cycle and can quickly attain a population that can overwhelm the host organism (your boa). A steady loss of blood will weaken the animal and make it susceptible to other conditions such as respiratory infection. • Mites can serve as vectors for disease. In other words, mites can feed from a diseased animal and then travel to a healthy animal and transmit the disease. How do snake keepers get rid of mites? There are a wide ran
Mites (subclass Acari) are an extremely diverse group of arachnids, closely related to spiders and scorpions. Mites are small and ubiquitous — even if your room looks perfectly clean, it is home to tens of thousands of tiny dust mites. Mites are among the most diverse subclasses of life, with over 45,000 known species, and an estimated total approaching one million. Because most mite species are microscopic and tropical, their diversity has been poorly characterized. Although mites are the most successful group of arachnids, most of them are less than a millimeter in length, meaning we never see them. Dust mites are among the smallest mites, about a third of a millimeter in length. Immature mites may be smaller than a fifth of a millimeter. Some of the largest mites are ticks, the bloodsuckers that spread Lyme disease. Pliny the Elder called ticks are “the foulest and nastiest creatures that be.” Like some other arachnids, mites are among the oldest known terrestrial creatures, with f
Information about: mites, lice, scabies, bed mite, harvest mite, tropical rat mite, grain mite, mold mite, house mite, itch mites, bird mites, chiggers, clove mites, straw itch mites, dust mites, and other household pests can be found at these websites: • Department of Etomology North Carolina Cooperative Extention – Mites that “Bug” People • Pied Piper – Mites • OSU – Mites Annoying Humans MORGELLON’S DISEASE IF you have fiber like material coming out of your skin, sores, intense itching, your hair is falling out, etc., you may have Morgellon’s Disease. The Morgellon’s Disease Organization has some info. In doing a google search for “Morgellons Disease” a bunch of websites come up offering “cures”. Some costing $200 others costing $1500. I do not know if any of these solutions work, as I get the calls from Morgellon’s people who have not been helped with traditional medicine and they are continuing to search for a way to heal themselves and their families. Many people affected by Morg
Mites are an extremely diverse and important group of arthropods that are related to spiders, scorpions, and a host of lesser-known arachnids. While other arachnids are exclusively predatory, mites exhibit a great diversity of lifestyles. Some mites feed on plants while others feed on animals (ectoparasites), and some are predators like their arachnid relatives. All mites share the following characteristics: Like other arthropods mites have jointed legs and an external skeleton, or exoskeleton. Mites also lack antennae and mandibles, or jaws, which distinguishes them from insects. Finally, mites and ticks are distinguished from all other arachnids by the absence of any abdominal segmentation (right).
