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Found a tick on my leg this morning, 2-3mm diameter (must have picked it up at the weekend).
Asked the wife to have a go at removing it with our trusty O'Tom tick twister. (Can't see as far as my own foot that clearly!).
The instant she touched it, it literally 'pinged' up and off my leg! Never seen one do that before.
Everything I've read (in my extensive 2 minutes of Google research) suggests they can't jump.
Have I discovered a new variety? Maybe it feasted on a radioactive host before me and now has super powers?
White ticks can't.
White ticks can’t.
😂
White ticks can’t.
Beat me to it!
Might have been a flea.
Or a grasshopper.
Or a frog.
Or a kangaroo.
Deffo a new variety of Vampire Flea probably picked up from one of the kids...🤔 or a hedgehog in your garden, or a fox has been visiting, or...answers on a postcard
Maybe it feasted on a radioactive host before me and now has super powers?
Clearly the superpower of direction-finding was not transferred to yourself 😉
Yes.
Removed an engorged tick from the cat and the tick jumped a long way (half way across the bed!)
Deffo a new variety of Vampire Flea
Closer to the truth than you think! Climate change means that we're now starting to see diseases in ticks on the S.Coast that previously were only found in central Europe...
I thought jumping was how they got on you in the first place?
Climate change means that we’re now starting to see diseases in ticks on the S.Coast that previously were only found in central Europe…
Go and post that on the Conservative Home forum for a double whammy of gammony outrage.
Thanks all for the usual variety of serious answers, p!ss takes and general bants.
Either way, I'm still here, so whatever it was it wasn't deadly (yet).
👍🏻
Might have been a deer Ked?
Keds live on deer, and can deliver a reasonably horrible bite. They have wings at some point during their life-cycle, when they fly onto the host, but then shed them and burrow into the deer’s skin.
Here’s a link: https://www.shootinguk.co.uk/answers/comparing-ticks-and-keds-81339
Might have been a deer Ked?
Definitely a tick. Looked just like this:
I would say looking at their legs and what the legs are for that no, they cannot jump.
They get onto you when you brush past something they are on, i.e. long grass. They don't jump or fly onto you.
It didn't jump
[img] 
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Recent pic, I managed 🙂
So Cute 🙂
Mor hick hop actually.
Sometimes dubh to tlc
@dangeourbrain: that may well have been it! It properly pinged up and away from my leg.
Maybe it just caught a whiff of my foot?
This entire thread needs to be destroyed by fire.
Burn it all and salt the ashes. Argh.
@redthunder those YouTube videos are very watchable!
STW never ceases to amaze me. Ask a question on something, anything, no matter how niche or obscure, and there'll be a lifelong expert along soon to tell you all about it. Brilliant!
Maybe we should have a thread of deliberately obscure questions, to find out which one-in-a-million topic we don't have a resident expert in! 🤔