TikTok Myth of the Week: Tick Hoaxes

When I first saw one of these TikTok videos, I didn’t get to look at it too closely. The doctor cut off the man’s pants and asked him what had happened; under his pants, dozens of dark oval bumps were visible in his skin. They almost looked like ticks, but not like ticks. Something other. I put the video aside, not wanting to look at it in more detail. However, if I zoomed in, I would see why the buds don’t quite look like mites. These were highlights.

Yeah, tiktokers (tiktokers?) smear their appendages with raisins or, more commonly, beans, and post videos with captions like “why is it itchy” and “the sand mites were terrible.” (Hashtag: #tickremoval.) The implied plot is always the same: a man has stumbled upon a patch of nature where ticks were just waiting to stick to his skin, and now he needs to get rid of them. Often they can’t.

Some of them are more persuasive than others. After seeing some of them that made me think, “Wait a minute…”, I returned to the man in the doctor’s office. I zoomed in on his foot. It was definitely a raisin.

In one of the most realistic videos, a parent finds a small cluster of engorged mites (beans) behind the baby’s ear. TikToker has chosen a type of dark gray bean that really does resemble swollen deer ticks, and a spot (behind the ear) that is not only a common tick attachment site, but also one that we can easily miss . It’s still beans though.

If you’ve watched these videos and feel like you’re afraid to go outside again, let me tell you some facts about mites and how they’re different from beans.

Do mites really burrow into human skin?

Yes, unfortunately it’s true. You can remove an infested tick with tweezers or a tick remover. (I always keep a TickKey in my first aid kit.)

Do ticks really look like this?

Like! When a tick first crawls over you, it’s a tiny thing, maybe the size of a sesame seed. After it attaches (by the way, after a few hours), it begins to feed and fill with blood. At this point, it’s roughly the size and shape of a bean. When it is full, it will fall.

Can you get so many mites at once?

Nope. I mean, you can collect a bunch of ticks individually, so there’s no hard limit, but you don’t end up with a bunch of billions of ticks. A more realistic scenario is that you go camping for the weekend, don’t check yourself for ticks while you’re there, but return home and find several ticks on different parts of your body.

You can avoid this scenario by using good old bug spray : DEET for the body , permethrin for clothes . It’s also about checking yourself every night and removing any ticks you find.

I will point out one place where I have heard of such swarms of ticks: in New England, winter ticks (also called elk mites) can sometimes infest moose in large numbers . Most animals can remove ticks on their own, but moose seem to have trouble with this. So, if you are not a moose, you have nothing to worry about. Winter ticks do not pose a threat to humans .

What to do if you stumble upon a tick nest?

“Tick nests” are not really anything special. The mites lay their eggs in groups the size of a dime, which later hatch, and then the young mites begin to live on their own. (If you’ve seen one viral photo of a supposed tick nest, it’s not clear what it is, but Snopes confirms it’s definitely not a tick nest .)

Adult ticks do not live in nests or hives, and even if they do, they do not attach instantly when they find human skin. If you were hit by a bunch of ticks, they would all disperse in different directions, and you would find them in a day or two.

How do we know these TikToks aren’t real ticks?

Because they are beans! They look like beans! They act like beans! Often when TikToker takes them off, you can see the glue that held them on. The skin underneath is never irritated or damaged; If you’ve ever removed a real tick, you know it leaves a trail. It’s beans, beans, beans, beans. (Except when it’s raisins.)

The clips also don’t show the videos you’d make if your friend were actually attacked by some strange infestation. Often, the cameraman silently films the bean-encrusted man making desperate (fake) attempts to “remove” the beans. Would you at least help your friend get out of the creek?

The doctor’s office video is well done, but still raises too many questions. Why does he have a pulse all the time? Why would a doctor cut off a guy’s pants if the guy is clearly calm, conscious and can take his pants off on his own? How is it that he “looked down and saw them” after working in the “field” when all the raisins were completely covered by his trousers?

I appreciate the creativity of some of these videos. There is one case where a person burrows their hand into fallen leaves (mites love fallen leaves) and pulls it out, revealing a hand covered in black bean rind. There is another option, where the beans are mixed with another type of balls or food (I don’t quite recognize it), which from afar looks a bit like gadfly larvae. (Don’t google flybot larvae.) There are even a few videos of TikToker letting real arthropods—tablet bugs, I think—crawl over their bean-covered arms. The bugs are harmless, but they are the same color as the beans, and the effect is terrifying.

Guys, these are disgusting videos. If you have trypophobia (fear of holes or bumps), this will trigger it. They should be fun to make: Tiktokers glue the beans into geometric patterns, use their acting skills to feign fear and disgust, use theatrical angles and soundtracks, and finally rip or tear off the beans. If you think about it, this is a really useful hobby. Just don’t think it reflects something that happens in nature.