They prey on the blood of dogs, horses, deer, birds, rodents, and people. There are hundreds of kinds of ticks, including the dog tick and the deer tick. Ticks live in cracks and crevices in the home or outside in vegetation, such as grassy meadows, woods, brush, and weeds. They cannot fly or jump, but they have a way of finding a host. Oftentimes, they will wait in wooded or grassed areas and attach themselves to any living creature that brushes them.
Ticks can also detect the carbon dioxide given off by warm-blooded animals.
They can crawl several feet to the carbon dioxide source. The first human outbreak of Lyme disease was identified in Lyme, Connecticut, in 1975, when an unusually large number of cases of arthritis resembling rheumatoid disease occurred within a small geographic area. Studies concluded that dogs from the same location also developed arthritis similar to that in human Lyme disease. Although Lyme disease is an illness common to humans and animals, there is no evidence that it can be transmitted from one to the other. Lyme disease cases have been documented in more than 40 states.