A deadly blood-sucking tick carrying a disease has escaped a news conference given by Japanese scientists, sparking fears it will spread its disease to the wider population.
Officials from the Miyazaki Prefectural Government brought the live tick along with a dead insect to an event hosted in southwest Japan.
When the deadly tick was put on the table, it managed to escape, prompting an urgent search which failed to recover the arachnid.
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The Sun reports: The room was then showered with insecticide in a bid to stop the fanged beast.
Miyazaki Governor Shunji Kono apologised for the embarrassing incident today.
He said: “We should have been more careful about safety management as the prefecture is in a position to alert its people.
The news conference was held after several residents were struck down with thrombocytopenia syndrome, or SFTS, which the tick carries, reports the Japan Times.
The slippery tick reportedly vanished when an official tried to pick it up with tweezers.
Reporters joined government officials in desperately looking for the killer insect.
The press room was thoroughly disinfected that night.
Last month, a farmer in his 60s died in the Ehime Prefectural, Shikoku in southwest Japan, after contracting spotted fever after being bitten by a tick.
In August, experts warned the UK will be conquered and colonised by a nasty species of Japanese hornet within 20 years.
These hornets have already been spotted on British shores and are expected to spread out across the nation over the next two decades.
The horrifying beastie measures 30mm long and has a powerful venom that can trigger cardiac arrest in people who are allergic to their stings.
Researchers from the the universities of Warwick and Newcastle believe Britain could be home to hundreds of thousands of the horror insects in just 20 years.
And in April, a Japanese insect enthusiast published disturbing footage of the pupa of a Hercules beetle.
When this creepy crawly is born, it spends up to two years chomping through rotten wood.
It then locks itself into a cocoon called a pupa to develop its exoskeleton – the name for a skeleton which exists outside the body.
The beetle then grows into its adult form and emerges from the cocoon as a massive creepy crawly with huge pincers.
It can grow as long as 6.7 inches.
The footage was shared on Twitter by Ziya Tong, a Canadian nature journalist.
