Take a Trip to the Tick Museum

There’s a museum at the Georgia Southern University that specializes in bloodsuckers! It’s not a museum that exhibits the history of vampires, it’s a place where a collection of the bloodsucking nightmares known to you and I as ‘ticks’ has been curated. Here’s an article with more information.

A museum of blood-sucking nightmares: the US National Tick Collection

To get to the US National Tick Collection, visitors to the campus of Georgia Southern University must descend into the bowels of the Math/Physics Building, where sunlight is absent and locked doors with unpronounceable signs prohibit entry. Curator Dr. Lorenza Beati, a smiling woman in wire-rimmed glasses and blue jeans, a woman who radiates the same vibe as a kindly, eccentric aunt, welcomes anyone who has daring enough spirit.

A visit to this world of ticks, may send shivers up the spines of many, however, it’s educational purpose will serve everyone well that decides to take a visit.

Over 850 different species of tick! Wow! That’s still going to be quite some museum if they are all housed there, no matter how tiny! Not all ticks spread disease, but many of them can pack a punch when they take a bite.

Ticks are even tougher and nastier than you thought

Ticks are nasty little survivors, outlasting even dinosaurs as they resist drought, tolerate cold and go months without a meal. They carry a host of diseases that they spread by plunging their barbed mouths into you like a grisly oil derrick. They’re hard to remove and even harder to kill. Is your skin crawling yet? Researchers at the University of Cincinnati are examining the tick’s defenses, looking for ways to prevent tick-borne illnesses such as Lyme disease.

If you’re not educated on the threat that ticks impose on the human race, then it’s worth doing a little research and making sure you are protecting yourself and your family from ticks.