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Ticks have long suffered a poor reputation in the world of bloodsucking creatures, and often for good reason. They carry pathogens that incubate bacteria and spread disease, paralysing and killing cattle, pets and native animals.
Blood-feeding mites are equally pervasive. They are found in most birds’ nests—even within their nasal passages and respiratory systems—and alongside possums, sugar gliders, owls, koalas and other mammals.
Down the ages, these tiny hitchhikers have altered the course of humanity: the plague, in a series of epidemics, created some of the biggest human mass casualty events in history. This occurred after global trading routes partnered a new strain of plague bacterium from Asia with two other introduced species: the black rat and a rat flea.
More recently, European honey bees were brought to Asia and the realm of a once-obscure parasite called varroa. In only 50 years, varroa has spread worldwide and is now causing untold damage to Australia’s bee populations.
According to Dr Matt Shaw, Australian Museum’s collection manager in entomology and arachnology, mites and ticks are not mere pests, but fascinating “micro-predators”.
He hopes an upcoming exhibition at the Australian Museum, Bloodsuckers: Nature’s Vampires, will help visitors appreciate these tiny critters, warts and all. Developed by the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, the exhibition features more than 100 objects, live specimens and digital interactives, including 18th- and 19th-century bloodletting instruments.
Kim McKay, the museum’s director and chief executive, notes that while some of nature’s most extraordinary survivors “give us the creeps”, it is time to change perceptions. She argues we should give these species credit for mastering the art of survival and playing critical roles in maintaining healthy ecosystems.
The diversity of nature’s bloodsuckers ranges from the famous vampire bat – which uses an anticoagulant appropriately named draculin – to the oxpecker, a bird commonly seen on the backs of large African mammals such as rhinos and buffalo.
These birds act as both mutualistic cleaners and parasites; they consume ticks while also feeding on the host’s blood by irritating existing wounds. Leeches remain the most famous of the bunch, their saliva a complex biochemical cocktail still used in modern medicine to prevent clots and ensure blood flow to congested tissues.
Shaw describes the tick’s feeding mechanism as a marvel of predatory engineering. “Ticks have two sets of teeth-like structures,” he says. “One set slices through skin like a pair of tiny scalpels doing breaststroke. This action drags their ‘prong’ – like the prow of a Phoenician warship, but with barbs – to lodge into the fresh wound.”
Beyond birds and bats, the world of blood-feeders includes certain snails, fish and moths. However, insects and ticks are by far the most numerous, accounting for 25,000 of the 30,000 known species – a conservative estimate given how many remain under-studied.
“The truism is that nature will find a way, and blood is a particularly good resource,” Shaw says. “It’s high in protein; it’s salty. If you evolve blood-feeding, you may never need to directly drink water again. It’s a mother lode of nutrition—if you can get it.”
He views the relationship between host and parasite as an “evolutionary arms race” – a dance of exploitation and adaptation in which two creatures form a deeply intimate biological relationship. “The exhibition is a window into a much bigger world of interactions, which aren’t always negative,” Shaw says. “It’s a story about how living things learn to live together, or at least tolerate each other.”
Bloodsuckers doesn’t stop at biology; it also explores how these creatures have inspired humanity’s darkest imaginations. Long before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, various cultures used the concept of the “bloodsucker” to explain disease, sudden death and the boundary between life and death.
In ancient Mesopotamia, the utukku were feared as spirit-demons that rose from the underworld to prey on the living. In African folklore, the asanbosam is a vampire-like creature with iron hooks for feet that dangles from trees, while in South-East Asia, the Manananggal is a monster capable of severing her upper torso from her lower body to fly through the night.
Ultimately, human reactions to these creatures are deeply primal. “It’s natural to have an aversion to bloodsuckers – the idea that these tiny creatures are lurking around hunting you,” Shaw says. “We don’t want to think of ourselves as a mere bag of blood. Leeches get a big reaction, but we are lucky that they don’t really transmit much. Mosquitoes, on the other hand, are the real problem.”
Bloodsuckers: Nature’s Vampires runs at Australian Museum from April 2 to October 11.
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