• Posted May 19, 2026

Ticks Can Creepy-Crawl Your House For Weeks Before Dying, Study Shows

Here’s a creepy-crawling fact as summer fun approaches – ticks can survive indoors for up to three weeks on hard-surface or carpeted floors, according to a study.

This means folks can have a tick latch onto them despite taking proper precautions outdoors, if one of the pests hitchhikes into their home on a person or a pet, researchers reported recently in the Journal of Vector Ecology.

“Ticks can pose a risk even in the places you least expect, such as your house,” lead researcher Afsoon Sabet said in a news release. She’s a doctoral student in entomology at Ohio State University in Columbus.

Cases of tick-borne diseases in the U.S. increased 40% between 2019 and 2022, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers said in background notes.

For the study, researchers tested survival times for 90 lone star and 90 Gulf Coast ticks, two types that can transmit germs that make people and animals sick.

Experiments involved five types of flooring – tile, wood, vinyl, short-pile carpet and shag-like carpet. The ticks were individually covered with a cup so they couldn’t escape, and their survival was compared to that of others kept in a growth chamber.

Average overall survival time was about 18 days for Gulf Coast ticks and 11 days for lone star ticks, the study found.

The longest survival time for Gulf Coast ticks was an average of 25 days on vinyl flooring and the shortest 10 days on shag-like carpeting, researchers found.

Lone star ticks survived longest on shag-like carpeting, an average 15 days, and shortest seven days on tile flooring.

Comparatively, some of the control ticks kept at ideal temperatures and humidity levels survived for more than a year, researchers said.

The research team speculated that the ticks probably died from loss of moisture.

“The tick life cycle is usually at least two years, typically. And the longevity of that tick is based on its ability to maintain moisture,” said senior researcher Risa Pesapane, an associate professor of veterinary preventive medicine at Ohio State.

“This shows that ticks are not going to die immediately,” even in a moisture-parched home, Pesapane said in a news release. 

“Pinpointing exactly how long a tick might survive in a home is really difficult because people’s homes are going to vary in their environmental conditions," she said. "But for the first time, this study puts some guardrails on that estimate, and it shows us that ticks can survive for at least a week.”

These results show the importance of protective measures like using tick prevention products on people and pets and, once inside, thoroughly checking animals for ticks and either immediately bagging clothes or putting them in a dryer, researchers said.

“The ultimate goal from a public health perspective is to reinforce that ticks brought into the home on pets or people could be a risk, and hopefully having some data around that will compel people to say, ‘OK, doing tick checks is really important,’ ” Pesapane said.

“That way you’re not releasing ticks into your home environment where you’re relaxed and comfortable, and most definitely not thinking about tick prevention,” she added.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on tickborne diseases.

SOURCE: Ohio State University, news release, March 27, 2026