ju66l3r Posted April 6, 2004 Share Posted April 6, 2004 I guess it makes sense...now how do we keep ticks from getting their micro-grooves on? Sex Makes Ticks Hungry for Blood Quote Link to comment
McKenzie Clan Posted April 6, 2004 Share Posted April 6, 2004 Leave tiny pictures of their naked tick mothers?? Quote Link to comment
+RJFerret Posted April 7, 2004 Share Posted April 7, 2004 That's funny, sex makes me hungry too... Enjoy, Randy Quote Link to comment
+Team GPSaxophone Posted April 7, 2004 Share Posted April 7, 2004 I'd say "Yay, sex!" but: You do not have access to this item Quote Link to comment
+KF6JML Posted April 7, 2004 Share Posted April 7, 2004 Ten bucks for a 24 hour pass to some ScienceNow site? I don't think so. I vote ScienceLater. Please cut and paste the article details so we don't have to $join$ to make informed comments or jokes. Might help to move this along. Although, maybe not? Is this about the tick's sex life or mine? I hate cold showers. Alt to the sig line... Nothing pains some people more than having to PAY to think about *what is this about anyway?*. NOT -Martin Luther King, Jr. Quote Link to comment
ju66l3r Posted April 7, 2004 Author Share Posted April 7, 2004 Sorry, didn't realize that it was linked beyond the front door of my academic institution's access (it's an automatic gateway for me so I don't know what's free or pay on their site anymore). As for "some ScienceNow website"....this is the scientific journal, Science...which may not hold much weight to mere mortals, but to us scientists, to even get a news brief like this is gold....to get a whole research article into it is platinum.. There are two super-big competitors for science journals (like the Time/Newsweek of news magazines)...Science and Nature. Here's the article text (minus the cool pictures of magnified bloated ticks): ----- Sex Makes Ticks Hungry for Blood An extra 15 kilograms during pregnancy may ruffle a woman's wardrobe, but it's nothing compared to the plight of a female tick. Before laying her eggs, she sucks enough blood to balloon up to 100 times her body weight. Now researchers have discovered what stokes the blood feast: a protein made by well-nourished male ticks and passed on during mating. The protein may harbor the biochemical secret to a vaccine to protect livestock from tick-borne illnesses. After mating, the female African cattle tick feeds slowly on her host at first, expanding up to 10 times her starting weight in 4 to 7 days. Then she abruptly starts to feed faster. Again, her body weight multiplies by 10--this time in a mere 24 to 36 hours. Scientists knew that sex was critical to this rapid engorgement, but until now knew little about what triggered it. Well, where else to look, but in the male gonads? These make proteins that can be transferred to the female along with sperm during mating. To determine if one of these proteins spurred the females' feasts, biologists Brian Weiss and Reuben Kaufman of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, injected extracts from male gonads into feeding virgin females. Gonad extract from males that had not fed off a host had no effect on the females. But the extract from recently fed males caused virgin females to engorge like a mated female. Narrowing down the field, they engineered proteins from 28 genes activated in the male gonads by feeding. This isolated the one protein responsible for causing rapid engorgement, which they dubbed "voraxin," from the Latin word for gluttonous. They report their findings online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers also report that they are in the early stages of developing an antibody to voraxin that can be injected to host as a vaccine. In preliminary tests with immunized rabbits, they found that the antibody prevented 74% of mated female ticks from engorging. Such a vaccine would not only reduce the ticks' effects on livestock, but it would also greatly reduce the females' egg-laying capacity, and thus the overall tick populations and risks of tick-borne diseases, says Anthony Kiszewski, an instructor in the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. "The discovery is certainly novel, with potential practical applications in agriculture," he says. ----- Quote Link to comment
+JMBella Posted April 7, 2004 Share Posted April 7, 2004 I guess I won't be listening to Barry White on the trails anymore. Quote Link to comment
+Shanediver Posted April 7, 2004 Share Posted April 7, 2004 I don't know about gorging myself with blood. A good slumber always works just fine for me... Quote Link to comment
+Geo Ho Posted April 7, 2004 Share Posted April 7, 2004 I guess it makes sense...now how do we keep ticks from getting their micro-grooves on? Sex Makes Ticks Hungry for Blood Hah! That won't stop me. Tick inspections are fun! Happy caching and stuff! Quote Link to comment
+clearpath Posted April 7, 2004 Share Posted April 7, 2004 Thank God rabbits don't have this blood craze. Everyone knows that rabbits multiple (have sex continuosly) rather quickly, in fact they make Paris Hilton look like a nun. Quote Link to comment
+Big Tom Posted April 8, 2004 Share Posted April 8, 2004 Mopar is the luckiest cacher alive! Nuf said. Quote Link to comment
+JMBella Posted April 8, 2004 Share Posted April 8, 2004 I guess it makes sense...now how do we keep ticks from getting their micro-grooves on? Sex Makes Ticks Hungry for Blood Hah! That won't stop me. Tick inspections are fun! Happy caching and stuff! < ------- Mopar. Quote Link to comment
+Faderaven Posted April 9, 2004 Share Posted April 9, 2004 I didn't think it was possible to hate ticks even more than I did.... Quote Link to comment
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