‘Clone tick’ swarms, new to U.S., are killing cattle by draining their blood

Worried about a Cascadia subduction-zone earthquake? Worried about nuclear war? Worried about climate change?

Phhffft!

Those potential calamities are nothing. If you want to really have nightmares, read on to find out what’s happening to cows in North Carolina -- and what it could mean for humans.

Asian long-horned ticks, also sometimes called “clone ticks” because they can reproduce without mating, have killed five cows in the Tar Heel State this year -- by draining them of blood. Each cow was infested by hundreds of ticks.

“The official cause of death,” writes technology news site Ars Technica, “was acute anemia, which is typically associated with severe hemorrhaging.”

These ticks are extremely aggressive; New Jersey health investigators in 2017 reported them swiftly clambering up their legs while they investigated a tick assault on a sheep paddock. The ticks’ usual killing grounds are in Russia and Asia, where they are known to spread various serious diseases to humans. It’s not known how or exactly when they arrived in the U.S. So far the ones found in North America have not carried disease.

67 counties in the United States have confirmed local Asian long-horned tick populations. Virginia has the most counties with 24 confirmed.

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