Opossums Eat Ticks and Help Humans
Why Opossums Get Ticked-off
Let's face it, ticks are one of those creatures that everyone hates. Even I, the biggest nature nugget of them all, hate ticks. They're flat and creepy and they invade the private moist areas of the human body that only my doctor and I should have access to. As if that's not enough, they bury their mouth parts in our skin, latch on, and suck our life-blood all while possibly transferring diseases. This creates a real ick factor that keeps many people out of the woods altogether. However, there is some hope, namely because there is a cadre of creatures that eat ticks. There are the usual suspects of beetles, ants, centipedes, and other generalist eaters that wipe out ticks, but this list also includes chickens and ground fowl such as guinea birds and bobwhites. There's even an African bird called an oxpecker, which lives in sub-Saharan Africa that eats ticks off water buffalo and other hoofed animals (and who doesn't love that name!?). Well, since we're short on oxpeckers here in the Eastern US we have to rely on another creature to help us out, namely the Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana).