When a tick is on my skin, what compels it to head towards a “hairier” part of my body? How does it innately just “know” where the primo-tick-real-estate is? Does it see hair or something?
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I think they head generally upwards, away from gravity.. for eg they climb up a grass stem until they reach its tip then they hang about there until an amimal brushes past and they can latch into it. They probably also have some kind if olfactory sense to smell that it is an animal that is brushing past and that it can transfer to. And then once they are on the animal, they just head upwards again, away from the direction of gravity – until they land up in armpits, under the tail, the ears, where they can dig in
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