Ongoing research into the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in whitetail deer has identified a tiny new piece of the puzzle: ticks.
University scientists from Wisconsin and Minnesota discovered single deer ticks (a.k.a. blacklegged ticks) in the wild, taken off the heads of CWD-infected deer, with enough disease-causing prions inside of them to spread the disease.
Hypothetically, a healthy deer could accidentally swallow one of those tainted ticks during social grooming, said Stuart Lichtenberg of the Minnesota Center for Prion Research and Outreach at the University of Minnesota.
