Tick attack: BBC hunts for tiny bloodsuckers as diseases rise

I’ve come to the park looking for blood-sucking ticks - to find out how common they are, why new species and new tick-borne diseases are coming to the UK and to discover how worried we should be.

We've gone only 30 paces into our walk in Richmond Park, south-west London, before Prof Cutler says it's time to flip over the blanket.I’m shocked at how little effort it took to find them and by how small they are. You could fit dozens of them on a fingernail.Ticks hatch as six-legged larvae and gorge themselves so much on their first blood-meal they sprout an extra pair of legs , becoming nymphs.

"Here we are in the middle of London, but ticks are going to be pretty well anywhere in the UK," she says.Prof Cutler bottles up the nymphs and we go hunting again. "We’re seeing different types of ticks that have been establishing in the UK so it all points towards that."If all ticks did was bite they would just be a nuisance. But like mosquitoes they spread disease when they plunge their mouths into our skin to drink blood.The ticks bottled up ready to be inspected back at the laboratory"It can take weeks to months before it starts to develop and you might have forgotten that you'd been bitten by a tick," says Prof Cutler.

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