- Doctors in China found a small spider inside a man's ear after he claimed to be feeling a strange "crawling sensation."
- When the spider couldn't be reached with tweezers, doctors decided to use saline to flush the insect out.
- Visit INSIDER'shomepage for more stories.
A man in China went to his doctors after he felt a strange and itchy "crawling sensation" in his ear. As with all of these horror shows, it turned out to be a creepy crawly making a home (and nightmare fuel) inside the man's head.
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The patient,from China'sJiangsu province, went tothe Affiliated Hospital of Yangzhou University,News 18 reports. There, doctorsinvestigated but didn't find what turned out to be a spider with standard equipment.
"I didn't notice it when inspecting [his ear] with the naked eye," Dr Zhang Pan told News 18. "However, using an endoscope, I discovered the small spider inside."
The doctor first tried to reach in there with a pair of tweezers to try and grab the spider, but it managed to avoid getting caught. After that, the ear, nose, and throat specialist decided to flush the spider out. He put drops into the man's ear whilst filming, and you can see the spider running away as its home gets flooded, like Indiana Jones running away from a boulder.
The clip, as you'd imagine, horrified peopleon Chinese social mediawhen it was posted, with one user saying "my ears itch after watching this video" and another asking the reasonable question, "what does the spider want to eat inside?".
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Insects crawling into people's ears is rare, but not quite as rare as you'd like.
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"I've seen spiders make a web in the ear canal; small moths and flying insects can get in as well," Erich Voigt, MDat NYU Langone Health,told SELFafter a co*ckroach gotlodged inside one woman's ear for nine days.
"co*ckroaches tend to get stuck inside and will scratch at the eardrum with their front legs."
On another occasion, a man in India went to the doctors with an ear itch, and they found a massive cricket living in there. The distressingly large creature was pulled out on camera as well, but we should warn you this one is pretty grim.
"These critters are known to be an invasive species, appearing all over the globe," Michael Sweet, a university lecturer and invertebrate expert, told theDaily Starat the time.
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"They like warm countries and hide during the day. It is likely this cricket crawled into the man's ear while he was sleeping and was just hiding there until the night came around."
The spider, too, was probably just looking for a nice quiet place to live, and didn't really care that it was inside a person.
