Ticks on the move. Imagining new disease entanglements in a changing climate.

Due to changes in ecosystems caused by climate change, half of the world’s species are on the move. Resilient and highly adaptable, all over the world ticks are moving to warm and humid places, where they enter new multispecies assemblages, and suck blood from and spread diseases to a novel range of human and animal bodies. Inspired by multispecies ethnography and based on three case studies (ticks on dogs in Indonesia, on monkeys in India and on sheep in Italy), this paper is intended as a reflection on how humans physically, mentally and socially navigate a local world where these parasites are increasingly present, hidden in fur, underforest and grass. Living with ticks entails reconsidering disease risk, interactions with other animals, the level of proximity to the “natural environment” that is considered safe, and the possibility of becoming intimate with an animal who hardly inspires such a feeling of closeness. Such an encounter also calls for reflecting practically on the concept of One Health, in which human, animal and environmental health are interconnected and disease control measures should aim at equally safeguarding each element of the triad. To ensure such a balance, careful decision-making (both at the individual and the collective level) is necessary with regard to, for example, the rewilding of predators, hunting, animal-keeping practices, land use and human behaviours. In short, it takes a deep re-imagination of species co-existence, in a planet that will surely be hot, but maybe could be healthy yet just to other-than-human beings.