Photo:Getty
Getty
It sounds like a creepy Halloween tale.
A small spider took up residence in the ear of a 64-year-old woman in Taiwan — and when doctors examined her, they discovered not only was the spider alive, but it had shed its exoskeleton in her ear canal.
“She had awoken to the feeling of a creature moving inside her left ear,” according to a case study that was published in theNew England Journal of Medicine.
Spiders shed their skins when they grow, according toCornell University— meaning, the spider grew larger after crawling in her ear.
The spider found in a woman’s ear.New England Journal of Medicine
New England Journal of Medicine
Over the next four days, she heard “incessant beating, clicking, and rustling sounds” the study said, but she didn’t seek medical treatment until the constant noise led to insomnia.
When doctors examined the woman, they discovered alive spidercrawling around the external auditory canal — the canal that connects the outside of the ear to the tympanic membrane (aka, the eardrum).
The spider and its exoskeleton were removed with a suction cannula, and the study notes, “the patient’s symptoms immediately abated." She stopped hearing the spider.
The spider’s exoskeleton was also in the woman’s ear canal.New England Journal of Medicine
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This isn’t the first time doctors have discovered a bug in someone’s ear; In 2019, a Kansas City, Miss., woman found abrown recluse— a notoriouslyvenomous spider— in her ear, and just this past May, anArkansas familydiscovered ticks had crawled into their toddler’s ear.
But it’s not necessary to start sleeping with earplugs.
Dr. Stacey Ishman, otolaryngology instructor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, toldNBC Newsthat patients who come to her with bugs in their ears have often been camping.
Spider shedding its exoskeleton.Getty
“Most of the time the ear is completely fine,” Ishman, who estimates she’s seen about eight people in her 23-year career with bugs in their ears, told NBC News. “If there’s some injury to the ear canal, quite honestly it’s more often from people trying to get it out than it is from the bug itself.”
And as for bugs crawling inside your mouth,Scientific Americanreported that spiders aren’t really interested in humans.
“Spiders regard us much like they’d regard a big rock,” Bill Shear, a biology professor at Hampden–Sydney College in Virginia and former president of the American Arachnological Society, told Scientific American. “We’re so large that we’re really just part of the landscape.”
Simply put, spiders don’t want to bug you.
source: people.com
