Previously, on Patient Zero.

Muscle aches, crushing throbbing headaches, giant bullseye rash.

I'm not an entomologist.

I knew nothing about ticks.

And it started as an investigation of children with arthritis.

Is that the tick right there?

Yep, the big nasty looking thing, yeah.

Wow.

So this is Amblyumavarium that I'm showing you right now.

The female, she's about the size of maybe like a green grape.

This is Colleen Evans, who until recently was the figurative cryptkeeper for one of the world's strangest zoological attractions.

One composed entirely of dead parasites.

So I am Colleen Evans.

I am the collections manager for the U.S. National Tick Collection.

And right now, she's talking to lucky college student Mary Montgomery,

who we hired to tour the collection with a microphone.

But she would have been about the same size as a male when she started feeding.

He's about the size of like a pencil.

She's showing her a big fat bloodsucker,

a species of tick that feeds exclusively on Central American sloths.

Any animal really you could think of, there's probably a tick that feeds on it.

Mammals, sure, that you probably knew, but did you know ticks feed on birds?

...