Little red spider looking bug on Sulcata

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kjr153

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I was looking at my Tortoise just now and noticed a little red spider looking bug on the tort. Is it literally like the size of the point of a needle. What is it? Can it infest the house?
 

mctlong

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A picture would help.

Is it attached to the tortoise? Does it brush off when you wipe it?

I'm wondering if it could be a tick.
 

kjr153

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No not a tick and this bug is soooo small that I would never be able to get a picture. If you took a red ink pen and made a dot it would be smaller than that dot.
 

luvpetz27

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Could be chiggers?? (jigger)
Look it up on internet if you can. See if it looks like the picture of them.

They are tiny and red. You can hardly see them. They like damp places.
 

wellington

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I don't know the name of them, but there is a teenie, tiny red spider that we get in Michigan and illinos, probably all over. We find them a lot on wood. Like a wood picnic table, benches, etc. They aren't harmful and you can squish it with barely and pressure. It looks like a spider, and is a teenie, tiny spider. If that helps:D The only spider, btw, I'm not afraid of:D
 

kjr153

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Wellington, you nailed it. So this is nothing that can infest my house, correct? :)
 

Tom

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Kjr, Where are you?

There are all sorts of bugs in the world that can get on our tortoises just as easily as they can get on a rock or a picnic table. The bug you saw is not tortoise related, its just a bug that happened to crawl onto your tortoise. Any bug species has the potential to infest your house, given the right conditions, but this has nothing to do with your tortoise.
 

kjr153

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Tom said:
Kjr, Where are you?

There are all sorts of bugs in the world that can get on our tortoises just as easily as they can get on a rock or a picnic table. The bug you saw is not tortoise related, its just a bug that happened to crawl onto your tortoise. Any bug species has the potential to infest your house, given the right conditions, but this has nothing to do with your tortoise.
 

Sezdawg

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Could be a spider mite! Don't know much about them though. Do some research! They are red and tiny!
 

Yvonne G

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If your bird has mites, it CAN be harmful to him. I don't know if what you're seeing is the same thing that gets on birds, but I wouldn't want them in my tortoise habitat. They are blood suckers. At night if you put a white cloth over your bird cage, in the morning you can see many little red dots on the inside of the cloth. Do a GOOGLE image search for "red mites on my bird" and you'll see pictures of them.
 
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