THIS TICK SERIOUSLY BITES

Scientists are having a cow over this scary bloodsucker.

The Asian longhorned tick is growing notorious for latching onto cows and sucking their blood until they die — and infectious disease researchers are becoming increasingly alarmed.

The murderous tick recently took its fifth victim: a bull in North Carolina, which was found dead after 1,000-plus ticks completely drained it of blood. Over the past year, the bull’s owner lost four other cows to the tick infestation, according to health officials in the state.

Another scary fact about this particular tick: A single, well-fed female can clone herself without a male, birthing as many as 2,000 bloodthirsty spawn. Researchers also worry they could spread diseases to humans, such as the Powassan virus, according to a report published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The news is especially grim given the Asian longhorned’s first appearance on a human — in nearby Yonkers, no less. A man doing yardwork in 2018 found the tick latched onto him and brought it to health officials, fearing Lyme disease.

This was a year after a lone sheep in New Jersey was found covered in Asian longhorned ticks — which promptly crawled up to investigators’ boots when they arrived to survey the situation.

Although the 66-year-old man was disease-free, the discovery was ominous. Investigators aren’t sure how the tick got from the sheep in New Jersey to the man’s yard in Yonkers.

And shortly after they found the Yonkers tick, investigators located 90 other Asian longhorned ticks in the short, manicured grass near the man’s home — areas that typically aren’t of concern for other types of ticks, which prefer long grass in shady areas, investigators reported.