What's a Ghost Moose? How Ticks Are Killing an Iconic Animal (2015)

Context: I've recently come across yet another side effect of climate change: the moose population is being endangered by ticks (and other parasites) who can now thrive in winter. The younglings get covered in tens of thousands of ticks and die of blood loss or starvation. – paraphrased from r/collapse

Highlights of the article:

> Ghost moose [is] an animal so irritated by ticks that it rubs off most of its dark brown hair, exposing its pale undercoat and bare skin.

> In recent years in New England, ghost moose sightings have become increasingly familiar.

> The reason is likely climate change [...] which is ushering in shorter, warmer winters that are boosting the fortunes of winter ticks [...] One moose can house 75,000 ticks, which are helping to drive a troubling rise in moose deaths, especially among calves.

> April has become "the month of death." That's when calves, skinny and malnourished from the lean winter and exhausted from carrying thousands of ticks for five months, are most likely to drop dead.

> The tick's life cycle begins in November, when larval ticks climb on plants, waiting for the two meter moose to brush past. The ticks clamber aboard and feast on warm moose bodies until early spring, when they drop off their host.

> In the past, after long New England winters that lasted well into April, the ticks would jump off moose, hit spring snow, and die, [...] but warmer, shorter winters means those ticks are more likely to land on bare, snowless ground, which lets them live another day — and possibly flourish.

> (In one case) The ticks had taken so much blood that her starving body was raiding its bone marrow, muscles, and even heart for precious protein. The moose, for all intents and purposes, was eating itself alive.