Anthrax mite

Sarcoptic mites have a circular body that's convex on top and flat on the bottom, with four pairs of legs. The first two pairs have suckers, while the last two have long bristles. Adult females are about 300–500 μm long, and their surface is covered in scales and fine striations.

Life cycle
The mite's life cycle has several stages, including:


 * Egg: Large and ellipsoid, about 230 μm long
 * Larva: Six-legged, hatches from the egg and cuts through the skin to dig new burrows
 * Nymph: Molts from the larva to become a first- or second-stage nymph
 * Adult: Round and sac-like, eyeless mites

The entire life cycle can take 2–3 weeks to complete. Adult female mites lay 2–3 eggs per day in the skin's outermost layer, the stratum corneum. The burrows they create look like tiny, raised, serpentine lines that can be grayish or skin-colored and more than a centimeter long.

Pathogenic mite hosting anthrax
The Anthrax mite (Sarcoptes anthracis) is a pathogenic mite and an intermediate host of anthrax.

Sarcoptes anthracis was classified by Dmitri Ivanovsky in 1901 after first occurrences of infection on Asian Tufted Deers. The parasitic itch mite burrows into skin and causes sarcoptic mange, mostly seen on even-toed ungulates. Pregnant female mites tunnel into the stratum corneum of a host's skin and deposit eggs in the burrows. Young mites move about on the skin and molt into a "nymphal" stage, hosting Bacillus anthracis in their digestive tract. They act as a vector that carries and transmits anthrax to their hosts causing an infection, which often results in death because the immune system was weakened by scabies before. The high host specificity of the mites is held responsible for the fact that mostly even-toed ungulates struggled with these consequences. In late 1950s the last foci of infection were reported in semi-domesticated reindeers after which no greater incidences were observed.