Arachnids · Ixodida · Argasidae

Eyeless Tampan

Ornithodoros moubata

Not Evaluated

It has not yet been assessed against the IUCN criteria. See full glossary

A soft tick, lacking the hard shield of the common ticks, which lives hidden in the cracks of earthen floors and in the walls of houses and pig pens in Africa. It comes out at night, feeds on blood within minutes and returns to its refuge.

Size

up to 1 cm

Diet

Carnivore

Feeds mainly on other animals.

Activity

Nocturnal

Active mainly at night.

Social structure

Colony

Lives in large concentrations, often for breeding reasons.

Sighting difficulty

Unknown

SavannaCarnivore Nocturnal Colonial Savanna Arachnid

20countries

Fun facts

It is the main vector of African swine fever, a disease that has killed hundreds of millions of pigs worldwide.
It also transmits African relapsing fever, caused by the bacterium Borrelia duttonii.
Unlike the hard ticks, which feed for days, this one feeds in minutes and can survive for years between one meal and the next.
It is a soft tick and a fast feeder: it takes a painless blood meal in about thirty minutes, almost always at night, and leaves. Nothing like the hard ticks, which stay for days.
It is the natural vector of African swine fever, which in Africa circulates between these ticks and the warthogs in whose burrows they live.
Its longevity is key to that disease: being long-lived, it keeps the virus in the focus for years.
It also transmits human relapsing fever, caused by Borrelia duttonii, for which it is both vector and the only known reservoir: no mammalian reservoir is known.
Both pathogens pass from mother to eggs, which perpetuates the infection in the tick population without any need for reinfection.