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Close-up of tick on straw
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If disease-carrying, blood-sucking parasites aren't really your thing, you would probably support a plan to eradicate ticks from the planet. These tiny pests aren't without purpose, however. They benefit the moist, dark ecosystems in which they live by serving as a food source for many reptiles, birds and amphibians. They also help control wild animal populations. Scientists even use them as an indicator of an ecosystem's overall health and stability. Found throughout forests and grasslands in North America and Europe, these annoying little critters do serve a purpose.
Food Source
When ticks are feeding on you or your pets, it's easy to forget that other species are feeding on the ticks. Ticks are an important source of food for several species of reptiles, amphibians and birds. Many woodland animals feed on them as well, including wild turkeys and western fence lizards. Knowing that ticks are a source of food may help you appreciate their existence, but it also gives you a clue how to combat them. Some people living in areas with heavy tick infestations raise guinea fowl, which eat the ticks and reduce their population. This practice is common in areas where livestock is kept and
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Like ticks, however, disease serves an important purpose. Disease helps to control wildlife populations while weeding out the weaker animals, preventing them from passing on potentially flawed traits. Nature is all about survival of the fittest, and disease helps determine which animals are, in fact, the fittest. Ticks carry Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and tularemia, all of which have a big influence on the health of animal populations within an ecosystem. Without these diseases and the ticks that spread them, an area could find itself overrun with deer, rabbits, mice and other animals who otherwise would have become ill and
The outburst spread of diseases in a population causes people to panic and become hopeless. The main reason diseases spread is due to unsanitary living styles. Also when a disease first begins, it is really hard to find a cure right away. A very deadly, infectious disease known as Typhus spread during the Holocaust. Typhus is caused by rickettsia and is spread by lice and flees.
Disease was always something on the emigrants mind when traveling the Oregon trail, because they never knew when a friend or themselves would succumb to it. According to the Frontier trails, an estimated 50,000 people died from disease (Underwood). The emigrants of the oregon trail had to live through the fact knowing disease could strike at any time and claim another victim. It was hard for the colonists to deal with disease, they had a hard time telling which one it was and often required loads of work to help heal them. According to the National Parks Service, the most common disease were cholera, dysentery, mountain fever, measles, food poisoning, smallpox, and pneumonia (Death and Danger along the Trails). As one can see, the colonists had a hard time figuring out what beast they were fighting, and how to fight it, which is why they ost so many lives. As one can see, the colonists had a hard time figuring out what beast they were fighting, and how to fight it, which is why they lost so many
Longhorns carried the ticks but were immune to the fever. A few farmers were so
Plague is an infectious disease that can lead to fatality. There was once a plague called pesticides. This plague would kill off dwarves rapidly and painfully thus causing extinction. However, the dwarves were responsible for a third of the food we consume daily. This plague surfaced in the areas where dwarves live and infected many of them. Weeks later, the dwarves begin to die, leading them towards extinction. Because of the extinction, a third of our food is diminished. Nonetheless, individuals would only care about the remaining two thirds of the food leaving people . As a result, many scientists are realizing that pesticides are the reason for the extinction of the dwarves and steadily declining food supplies.
The effect of these diseases in the New World (and in fact, many diseases have in general) is rather ironic. The pathogens that cause disease are not out to kill anything, quite the opposite. The whole purpose for anything existing in this world is to pass its genetic material on to offspring. This concept is called fitness. For an organism to be optimally fit, it must survive so it can successfully multiply as often as it can, creating numerous kin so that its genes will live on generations past its own death. For viruses to live, they need a host. They infect an org...
While the Europeans were traveling to the New World, they often brought domesticated animals with them for sources of food and livestock. When animals and humans are living in close quarters together, it is very likely for exposure to germs to occur. New diseases were brought over by foreigners looking for fame and gold that killed off many of the natives in the new lands. The natives did not stand a chance against these new threats because of a lack of knowledge and supplies to cure themselves. Once the Europeans established diseases as they made land in the New World, their journey had only become easier as their competition were being wiped out from the rapid spread.
Multiple circumstances within the cities, families, and organizations of societies contributed to the rapid spread of the plague. Rats, ticks and other rodents or insects where one of the reason the plague spread throughout the world and most of Europe. The ticks and fleas where infected with the disease and they bit the rats and other rodents, which infected them with the disease. The ticks and fleas also bit other rodents, livestock and even the attached themselves to humans and transferred the disease to them. The rats or other rodents ran throughout the place they where bit by the tick. Some of the rodents began to go into ship yards and trains. They bread with other rats and begin to produce offspring which created an even bigger problem. The rodents got onto the ships and where transported around the world, along with the now infected materials on board. The rats would drop their feces around the ship and even on the drinking water and food. When the ships docked at ship yards around the world the rats got off and ran around the new country they now belonged to. Some of the supplies that where taken off of the ship included but was not limited to, liquids, foods and livestock. These supplies where shipped around the world and contributed greatly to the spread of the disease.
electric fence ticks like the slow heart of something we fed and bedded for a
Diseases lie in a large geographical content. Lyme disease is mostly found in the United States of America and Europe.
Native Americans had previously remained isolated and healthy, as the rest of the world was ransacked by diseases like the Black Death. Europeans had been able to build up their immune system to these diseases; the Natives had never encountered European diseases like mumps and smallpox. Native Americans were left “immunologically defenseless” against the volatile European diseases (Document 6). Document 6 was written by a historian, which would explain why he is better able to write from a less biased view of the colonization of the Americas, as well as how he understands the consequences diseases had on the Native population. Although Europeans were not always purposely infecting the Native American population, the introduction of new diseases is what led to the Native population to decline by 82%. Diseases began to “spread during October” throughout major civilizations like the Aztecs and the Incas, where the disease “lasted for seventy days, striking everywhere in the cities and killing a vast number of [Native] people” (Document 4). Document 4 was written in the point of view of the Aztecs, one of the several Native American tribes to be victimized by disease. The Native 's’ point of view is significant because readers will better be able to understand the lasting impact the disease had on the Native population. Native civilizations like the Aztecs with Tenochtitlan had cities bigger in size than most European cities. This caused the disease to spread rapidly and stunted production in Native American tribes. Diseases weakened the Native population, further preventing them from attempting to abstain the Europeans’
In fact, according to Atrocities Against Native Americans, they said that the diseases spread because of the Europeans, cleared out an estimated 90% of the Native American population. Being from different areas, you can probably assume that the immunity of the Native Americans is pretty low against pathogens that came from a different area. Most of them got sick from the animals and ended up with diseases such as the whooping cough, scarlet fever, measles, influenza type B & more. If the Europeans never came over to their land, they wouldn't have gotten so
Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease in the United States. It was first observed in a cluster of children from Lyme, Connecticut who presented with symptoms of arthritis. The sickness is created by Borrelia burgdorferi, sensu stricto, which was initially recognized in 1982. In spite of the fact that the greater part of cases are accounted for from the northeastern, north focal, and Pacific waterfront districts of the nation, a few hundred cases every year are accounted for from the southern United States. People and a few creatures get this illness when they are bitten by ticks tainted with borrelia burgdorferi.
Throughout history many different diseases have infected the world. Such diseases consist of measles, mumps, malaria, typhus and yellow fever. Many of these diseases are caused by different things and originated in different countries.
Infectious diseases also called as communicable diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms (such as bacteria, viruses, parasites or fungi), can be spread directly or indirectly from one person to another. Plague is a deadly infectious disease (ZOONOTIC DISEASE) caused by a gram negative bacterium Yersinia pestis. Plague is a disease that affects humans and other mammals. The bacteria are mainly found in rats and in the fleas that feed on them. Plague is transmitted to humans or other animals from rats and fleas bite that is carrying the plague bacterium, scratches from infected animals, inhalation of aerosols or consumption of food contaminated with the plague bacterium i.e. Yersinia pestis.
It seems like a contradiction. Doctors work hard to find cures and vaccinations for the various diseases and viruses that plague our population. On the other side of the coin, however, there are people that would use disease as a weapon. They not only use the sort of disease that nature provides, but try to create more effective and horrific manmade diseases. Biological weapons, as opposed to chemical weapons, are effective with a relatively small quantity of agent. However, most of these agents have a limited shelf life, as their activity is continually declining (Hay, 1984).