The tick pictured is one of the common ticks found on dogs and around human habitations.
There are two principal types of ticks, the hard tick, such as the dog tick shown, and the soft tick (the fowl tick, for example).
The mature female tick lays eggs following her last blood meal and molt. When the eggs hatch, the young nymphs (called seed ticks) crawl up any bush or high weeds handy and wait for a passing host. Here they remain until they find a host or die. Hard ticks usually have two or three hosts (and molts) during a lifetime, but soft ticks require many molts and need many hosts to complete development.
Tick bite paralysis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, relapsing fever, tularemia (rabbit fever), and Texas cattle fever are some of the important diseases associated with ticks.
