Several much less common species of ticks in the park attach to hosts that humans don't often come in contact with, and they don't seem to have developed a taste for human blood. All ticks know when prey is near. They use sense organs to detect animal scent, carbon dioxide, and heat. The adult western black-legged and Pacific Coast ticks are usually found at the end of grass stems or other vegetation, often along trails. They can also be found in brush.
Younger stages crawl onto prey from the ground and low vegetation.
The adult ticks wait, with their front legs outstretched, and when an animal brushes against the vegetation, the tick grabs on. The pajahuello tick lives in gravely soil and actually looks like a piece of gravel. It crawls along the ground and onto its prey. Ticks cut an opening in the skin and insert their barbed snout . The barbs make it difficult to remove the tick, and they also secrete a cement that helps keep them attached.