Crows remove ticks (part 1 of 5)

FAQ Please read - we encourage questions and comments, but please see if your question is answered in the FAQ below before commenting. Updated 25 October 2020.

Q1. Why don't we brush the wallabies to get rid of the ticks? A: Because they are wild animals, not pets. It is illegal to interfere with native wildlife in Australia

Q2. Why don't we trap/catch the wallabies to get rid of the ticks? A: Because it would kill them - following a stressful event such as being chased and captured, wallabies can suffer from rhabdomyolysis, which is the death of muscle fibres and subsequent release of toxins into the bloodstream. This can lead to serious complications such as renal (kidney) failure within 24 hours after the incident and death will occur within 2-14 days later.

Q3: Why don't we spend thousands of dollars on tranquilliser dart guns to sedate the wallabies to remove the ticks? A: Illegal.

Q4. Why don't we put something in the water to kill ticks? A: This was the only water source for many kilometres, and all wildlife depended on it for survival - including bees, reptiles and amphibians. Adding insecticide to the water would result in a catastrophic by-kill of unintended victims.

Q5. What's with the wood in the water? A: To provide safe access to the water for small birds, insects, reptiles and amphibians, as well as a way to get out if they fall in.

Q6. Don't the heads of the ticks stay attached and cause infection? A: No, the ticks are removed whole - we often find dropped ones in the water, still complete and very much alive. We also get covered in ticks during summer, and pull them off ourselves with little care and without problems - we have never had mouthparts left behind in our skin. Infection only appears to be a problem for the wallabies when large numbers of ticks remain attached in one site, causing inflammation, circulation loss, necrosis and eventually sloughing of necrotic tissue. The older wallabies have all lost the top half of their ears to this process. Bear in mind too, that a single female tick will lay thousands of eggs, so every tick eaten = thousands of eggs not laid.

Q7. "You moron, these are crows!"/ "you idiot, these are ravens!". A: There has been terse disagreement in the comments about whether these are Australian ravens (Corvus coronoides) or Torresian crow (Corvus orru). Whatever your personal opinion in the Great Crow v's Raven Debate, please just pretend that the title supports your view and move on with your life. I'm at the stage of just removing these pointlessly acrimonious comments - people get upset about the strangest things.

Q8. You terrible people! How did you let your animals get in this state?! A: These wallabies roam over an enormous range through agricultural land and state forestry, and are as much "our animals" as the wind is "our wind". This footage was filmed during an unprecedented Positive Indian Ocean Dipole event which resulted in a ferocious drought and dried up all natural water sources in the region - some for the first time in living memory. Historically, providing artificial water points has been discouraged in Australia, as macropods are meant to be nomadic and not remain in one place to strip the vegetation. The summer of 2019/2020 marked a change in this official position however, as all of eastern Australia was in severe drought and on fire; there was no where for the wildlife to go. The Department of National Parks and Wildlife even resorted to dropping feed into National Parks by helicopter in an attempt to prevent the loss of entire populations of critically endangered species. We were carting feed and water over 100km to this site, but newcomers were arriving every day, many in horrific condition.

Q9. What about Lyme disease? A: Surveillance of Australian ticks has not yet found the presence of the Borrelia bacterium (which causes Lyme disease) in Australian ticks. There are however people who have been diagnosed with Lyme disease after returning to Australia from overseas, and Australian ticks do carry diseases which can have somewhat similar symptoms, including Australian Tick Typhus or Spotted Fever and Flinders Island Spotted Fever, leading to 'Lyme-like disease'. Also of interest is a rare condition called tick-induced mammalian meat allergy, caused by an acquired allergy to the galactose-α-1,3-galactose protein which is found in mammalian meat and animal products such as cow's milk and gelatine. Happily for us, the vast majority of tick-borne illness in Australia arises from Ixodes species, especially Ixodes holocyclus, not the kangaroo tick, Amblyomma triguttatum. Ixodes species are most common in moist, humid coastal areas, which as you can see from the footage, does not in any way describe our property. We take reasonable precautions to avoid tick bites, such as wearing long sleeves and insect repellent, but if we were afraid to pick up a single tick we could not continue our work on this property.