African Tick Smuggles Itself Into US Inside Scientist’s Nose!
Saturday, October 12th, 2013
Shel Silverstein once had a poem about a snail that lived in your nose and would bite your finger off.
Maybe he was inspired by something that’s been going on in Africa that nobody’s ever paid much attention to…until now…
A US pathobiological science professor returned home from an excursion to Africa. Three days later he discovered he’d picked up a small hitchhiker. That small hitchhiker was a tick. It had hitched a ride inside his nose!
After removing the tick using forceps, a mirror and a small torch, the tick was hustled off to Georgia where its DNA was sequenced revealing that this little world traveler might possibly be an entirely new species.
Tony Goldberg, the professor harboring this tiny nightmare in his nose, is now rethinking his theories about how chimps and humans exchange pathogens. Upon further research, reports and high resolution photos turned up these same ticks hiding in chimps’ noses as well.
In a statement we can all relate to, Goldberg says, “”When you first realize you have a tick up your nose, it takes a lot of willpower not to claw your face off.”
We couldn’t agree more…and we don’t even have ticks in our noses.
