“Mutant ticks are attacking - this is not a tabloid headline but a fact,” reported Zvezda, the Russian defence ministry’s newspaper. The mutant ticks have been found in several regions of Siberia. They combine the “worst qualities” of two common types of Russian tick - Ixodes persulcatus, the taiga tick, and the “malicious” Pavlovsky or Far Eastern tick. They attack people in both long and short grass. A “large number inter-species hybrids” which produce “fertile offspring” have invaded Novosibirsk and Tomsk regions, said Dr Nina Tikhunova, of the Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine, Novosibirsk. This mutant “is capable...