I was recently listening to an episode and was like "Wait, What? What did I just hear? Does Greg think that ticks jump out of trees. Trust me they are not that talented. They crawl up a blade of grass like a foot off the ground and wait till you brush against them.
Sorry this is all about the behavior of my local ticks, I have no idea how they behave in Florida, or if they are even there. Ticks are not scary.
They act more like little robotic machines. I like to hike, and the part of Montana where I live is infested with ticks. My record is finding 23 ticks on me in one hike. So I have always been interested in how they got on me, and kept looking for them in the wild. When I finally spotted them, I started to see them everywhere.
What they do is emerge in the spring only in the mountains right after the snow melts, we had a mild winter this year so they came out in early March, their life cycle is only a month or two, so they are gone for the season already. They crawl up a stalk of dead grass or some other thin plant that they can wrap their legs around, and they are easy to see with their dark bodies on the tan grass, they just hold on to the grass a few inches from the top and when I brush my leg past the grass they sense the movement and stick out their back two legs, which are basically like Velcro for fabric. If they successfully get on my leg they start to slowly crawl up, I can catch them at it if I just look at my pants occasionally while hiking, but they are sneaky, they will crawl up the back of my pants, and then they crawl up the inside of my shirt usually and then when they make it to the back of my neck, if they make it that far, as soon as they start crawling on my skin I can feel them, and reach back, grab it, and crush it with my Leatherman.
I have never been bitten. After a hike, I shower and throw my clothes in the wash, there is no chance they can survive that. And the biting process itself is really slow, it can take like 2 days before the tick is really firmly attached and has started to suck blood. Get someone to inspect your head if you are worried. They are pretty small, but still easy to see. My dog got some ticks once and when they start to suck blood they get huge, like ten times the size.
You would have to be not paying attention and have terrible hygiene for a tick to successfully get a bite. I have no idea, but if I had to guess a tick is successful at biting a person less than 1% of the time, they are pretty successful with deer, though, and other animals.
