Posted by:
brhaco
at Tue Mar 25 17:53:03 2008 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by brhaco ]
Don't want to be disrespectful, but what you are describing is impossible. Ticks are air-breathing arthropods (related to spiders)-they could not survive within your python's reproductive system. Nor is there any mechanism by which they could have entered in the first place. It just can't happen.
Now balance against the above the fact that the observation you describe is VERY consistent with the known behaviour of the common tick found on wild-caught ball pythons. I'd refer you to the Barker's book for a full explanation of the tick's life cycle. The tiny ticks that came in with your pythons merely were too small to be noticed, and as they grew were so well camoflaged that they escaped later discovery. But they are very hard to miss on a bunch of white eggs! I realize your pythons may have been treated for external parasites, but ticks are tougher than mites, and often survive a treatment that would have killed off an ordinary mite problem...I've had the exact thing happen to me a couple of times, and the explanation is simple.
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Brad Chambers
WWW.HCU-TX.ORG
The Avalanche has already started-it is too late for the pebbles to vote....
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Steve- - brhaco, Tue Mar 25 17:53:03 2008