Do bugs crawl into your ears while you're asleep?

"John Hanning Speke, remembered for tracking down the source of the Nile River, recorded that the interior of his tent "became covered with a host of small black beetles, evidently attracted by the glimmer of the candle." Exhausted, Speke went to sleep with them crawling over his person, only to be awakened by one of the "horrid little insects" struggling into his ear. Trying to remove the beetle only pushed it in further. The beetle continued into Speke's ear as far as possible, and then "he began with exceeding vigour like a rabbit in a hole, to dig violently away at my tympanum. The queer sensation this amusing measure excited in me is past description . . . What to do I knew not." After trying to flush the critter out with melted butter, Speke tried to dig it out with his penknife, succeeding only in killing it and increasing the damage to his ear. Infection followed, distorting his face and causing boils. "For many months the tumour made me almost deaf, and ate a hole between the ear and the nose, so that when I blew it, my ear whistled so audibly that those who heard it laughed. Six or seven months after this accident happened, bits of the beetle -- a leg, a wing, or parts of the body -- came away in the wax." (Quotes are from Speke's journals, as referred to in Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton by Edward Rice, 1990, Scribner's, New York.)"

exerpted from Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/insects/bugear.htm

we stopped in a rest stop in Texas to sleep. I woke up to the screams of a girl I was travelling with. A bug had crawled into her ear. She ended up going to the hospital and they got it to crawl back out by filling her ear up with mineral oil.

somewhere stating that it's not very uncommon for people to show up in emergency rooms with cockroaches in their ears. And, amazingly enough, a doctor learned that to get the bug out, the best thing to do was to squirt some cocaine in there. You don't want to kill the roach, because then it'll never come out. But cocaine makes it crazy and hyperactive, so it wants run out and go club-hopping or something.

after a human's ear canal.....:scared: but the cocaine is not included. }(



Oh, Welcome to DU!

:hi:

Glad to be here.

yuck

... Burton couldn't keep his pants on among native women (and perhaps men as well) and at one point had syphilis, for which there was no cure. But he got over it when he nearly died of another disease in the wilds of Africa. He had an ungodly fever that had him laid up in a tent for weeks. It must have killed the spirochetes. And I think it also cured his pinkeye, which in pre-antibiotic days could last for years of extreme discomfort. How he survived having a spear thrown through his face in Somalia back when doctors were still using leeches, God knows.

in Africa that sleeps with an elbow on the ground and their head cradled in their hand. Keeps bugs from crawling in their ears. Don't laugh, its true!

Sad, but true.

makes for some really vivid dreams ...

seriously..they feed off your earwax...They love the stuff but can sometimes suffocate, requiring a doctor to get them out..

Oh, and I read somewhere that the average American eats three spiders a year..

they crawl into your mouth while you are snoring and you swallow them..

sweet dreams.
:)

...earwigs, those nasty things, would get into ears of sleeping people and eat their way through brains or maybe lay eggs in there and then the larva would eat the brains. I think there was a really creepy "Night Gallery" episode about that.

But I guess humans are lucky that we don't get ear lice like cats do.

If you want to have truly gruesome nightmares, read up on river blindness (worms swim through your eyeballs!!), filariasis and the Guinea dragon worm (think John Hurt's big scene in "Alien").

I don't think they can get all the way to the human brain...they are content to nibble on all of the crap that leaks out of your head until they get fat and die...then rot in your ear lobe...

such a pleasant thought to end the day

I just read this entire thread and now I'm going to have nightmares if I can manage to fall asleep tonight. Oh man...:puke:

The idea of cockroaches and other bugs getting stuck in my ears is somewhat disturbing to say the least (though I already knew that it happens).

Spiders drop down from the ceiling into my mouth. Bugs crawl in up the side of my face. I awaken frequently while chewing.

Hell, I never have to eat breakfast anymore!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:)

sweet dreams :boring:

...Centepede in her bed. It was about ten inches long, black body, red head and pinchers, and school bus yellow legs. She had only been living in Texas a couple of weeks and was ready to leave.

......ingests 8 to 12 spiders per lifetime while sleeping? good thing it's while i am sleeping...i am scared shitless of those things awake!!!

that bug-in-the-ear thing reminds me of "star trek-the wrath of khan" where khan puts those bugs in chekov's ear.....ewwwwwwww.....