Should You Try This Hack To Prevent Tick Bites?
Worried about ticks? This hack claims to keep them at bay, but we asked the expert if it's actually sound science. Here's what he said.
Not many bugs are creepier than ticks. Add the diseases they can transmit, and it’s no wonder we want to do everything we can to keep them from biting us. That’s probably why a sticky-tape-based tick hack on TikTok got nearly half a million likes.
But just because the video is popular doesn’t mean the method is sound. So we asked “The TickGuy,” Thomas N. Mather, Ph.D, if he would recommend this hack.
Mather has devoted more than three decades to researching how to prevent tick bites. He currently serves as director of the University of Rhode Island’s Center for Vector-Borne Disease and TickEncounter Resource Center.
Continue reading the full artile written by Karuna Eberl here.
February 10, 2025
Karuna Eberl
A freelance writer and indie film producer, Karuna Eberl covers the outdoors and nature side of DIY, exploring wildlife, green living, travel and gardening for Family Handyman. She also writes FH’s Eleven Percent column, about dynamic women in the construction workforce. Some of her other credits include the March cover of Readers Digest, National Parks, National Geographic Channel and Atlas Obscura. Karuna and her husband are also on the final stretch of renovating an abandoned house in a near-ghost town in rural Colorado. When they’re not working, you can find them hiking and traveling the backroads, camping in their self-converted van.
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