Cattle Fever (Babesia) Ticks: “The Charge of the Tick Brigade” 1919 USDA Animated Cartoon

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‘An animated cartoon shows the life cycle and feeding habits of the cattle fever tick. Emphasizes the value of dipping cattle to eliminate this menace.

Creator: Department of Agriculture. Federal Extension Service. ‘

Public domain film from the Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.

The film was silent. I have added music created by myself using the Reaper Digital Audio Workstation and the Independence and Proteus VX VST instrument plugins.

Babesia is a genus of protozoan parasites of the blood that causes a hemolytic disease known as babesiosis. Over 100 species of Babesia have been identified, but only a few have been documented to be pathogenic in humans.

In the United States, Babesia microti is the most common strain associated with humans. Other species infect cattle, livestock, and occasionally domestic animals. People who contract babesiosis suffer from malaria-like symptoms. As a result, malaria is a common misdiagnosis for the disease…

History

For centuries, babesiosis was known to be a serious illness for wild and domesticated animals, especially cattle. Victor Babeş, a Romanian scientist who first documented the disease in Romania in 1888, described symptoms of a severe hemolytic illness seen uniquely in cattle and sheep. Although he identified the causative agent in 1888, he incorrectly believed it to be due to the bacterium he named Haematococcus bovis.

In 1893, Americans Theobald Smith and Fred Kilborne identified the parasite as the cause of Texas cattle fever, the same disease described by Babeş. Smith and Kilborne also identified the tick as the agent of transmission, a discovery that first introduced the concept of arthropods functioning as disease vectors…

Ticks are small arachnids in the order Ixodida. Along with mites, they constitute the subclass Acarina. Ticks are ectoparasites (external parasites), living by hematophagy on the blood of mammals, birds, and sometimes reptiles and amphibians. Ticks are vectors of a number of diseases, including Lyme disease, Q fever (rare; more commonly transmitted by infected excreta), Colorado tick fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, African tick bite fever, tularemia, tick-borne relapsing fever, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, Tick paralysis, and tick-borne meningoencephalitis, as well as bovine anaplasmosis…

Range and habitat

Tick species are widely distributed around the world, but they tend to flourish more in countries with warm, humid climates, because they require a certain amount of moisture in the air to undergo metamorphosis, and because low temperatures inhibit their development from egg to larva. Ticks of domestic animals are especially common and varied in tropical countries, where they cause considerable harm to livestock by transmission of many species of pathogens and also causing direct parasitic damage.

For an ecosystem to support ticks, it must satisfy two requirements: the population density of host species in the area must be high enough, and humidity must be high enough for ticks to remain hydrated. Due to their role in transmitting Lyme disease, ixodid ticks, particularly I. scapularis, have been studied using geographic information systems (GIS), to develop predictive models for ideal tick habitats. According to these studies, certain features of a given microclimate — such as sandy soil, hardwood trees, rivers, and the presence of deer — were determined to be good predictors of dense tick populations…