What Do Ticks Look Like?
Ticks look like small, flat, oval seeds with eight legs and no visible head, usually reddish brown to dark brown. They range from the size of a pinhead to about 1/4 inch before feeding, then swell into a gray, bean-shaped blob after a meal. In Texas, the lone star tick and the American dog tick are the ones people find most.
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What Ticks Look Like Up Close
A tick's body is one piece, with no waist between a head and an abdomen. What looks like a head is really the mouthparts, sticking straight out from the front. Adults and nymphs have eight legs, like spiders, which is the quickest way to tell a tick from a beetle or a bed bug.
Feeding changes everything. A flat, crawling tick fills with blood over several days and can grow many times its size. Texas A&M's Tick App notes that a female lone star tick averages 4 to 6 millimeters unfed and can reach 16 millimeters or more once fully fed. At that point, it looks more like a gray skin tag or a small bean than a bug.
Texas Ticks and How to Tell Them Apart
Texas A&M lists 11 tick species as common in Texas, and five of them are the ones people run into most. This table uses the descriptions in the Tick App to show how each one looks.
| Tick | What it looks like | Where it turns up |
|---|---|---|
 Lone star tick |
Reddish brown, and the female has one white or bronze spot on her back | Woods, brush and tall grass, especially in the eastern half of Texas |
| American dog tick |
Dark brown, with a cream-colored shield marked with brown | Grassy areas, trails and field edges |
| Brown dog tick |
Plain light to dark brown, with no markings | Inside homes and kennels where dogs live |
| Black-legged tick |
Small and dark, with a dark shield over an orange-brown body | Wooded areas where deer travel |
| Gulf Coast tick |
Reddish brown, with a pale cream shield marked with red-brown lines | Grassland and prairie |
The brown dog tick is the one that can take over a house. The Tick App notes that it lives mainly around homes and kennels, can survive more than 18 months without feeding and is often seen crawling up walls. One female can lay up to 4,000 eggs.
Tick Larvae, Nymphs and Adults
Every tick goes through three active stages, and each one looks different. Larvae are pinhead-sized, pale and have only six legs. People in Texas call them seed ticks, because they often turn up by the dozens or hundreds at once. Lone star tick larvae are most active from June through August.
Nymphs have eight legs and are about the size of a poppy seed, which makes them easy to miss on skin. Adults are the size most people picture, closer to an apple seed. Lone star adults peak from March to May, so spring hikes and yard work bring the most adult bites.
What Ticks Look Like on People and Dogs
On skin, an attached tick looks like a dark freckle or scab that wasn't there yesterday. Look closer, and you'll see tiny legs near the skin and the body angled up from it. Ticks favor warm, hidden spots, such as the waistband, behind the knees, the armpits and along the hairline.
On dogs, ticks often look like a small gray or tan bump in the fur. Check around the ears, between the toes, under the collar and around the tail. A tick that has fed for a few days can be mistaken for a wart or a skin tag, so part the fur and look for legs at the base.
Removing a Tick the Right Way
Pull it out as soon as you find it. The CDC's advice on what to do after a tick bite is to grasp the tick with clean, fine-tipped tweezers as close to the skin as possible. Then pull straight out with steady pressure. Don't twist or jerk it, and skip the nail polish, petroleum jelly or heat.
Wash the bite and your hands afterward. Call a doctor if a rash or fever shows up in the weeks after the bite. In DFW, Lyme disease is present but uncommon, while the lone star tick can pass on ehrlichiosis.
If ticks keep turning up in the yard or on the dog, our tick treatment for DFW yards targets the shady, grassy spots where they wait. Families in and around Aubrey can book tick control in Aubrey for the same yard work.
Ticks FAQ
How big is a tick?
It depends on the stage and whether it has fed. Larvae are pinhead-sized, nymphs are about the size of a poppy seed and unfed adults run about 1/8 to 1/4 inch. A fully fed female can grow past 1/2 inch.
Can ticks live in your house?
Most can't, because they need humidity and outdoor hosts. The brown dog tick is the exception. It survives and breeds indoors around dogs and can build up in a house or kennel if no one treats it.
What can be mistaken for a tick?
People often mistake spider beetles, bed bugs and some young spiders for ticks. Count the legs and look at the body shape. Ticks have one flat, oval body with no waist and mouthparts pointing forward.
Ticks on the dog after every walk usually mean the yard is holding them. Ask for yard treatment pricing online or by phone, and we'll focus on the shade where ticks wait.
