Animal Series #16; Why Do They Love Crawling Inside Of Your Ears?

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Before You Read This Article, I Must Warn You That Not Everyone Will Feel Comfortable With Images And Some Texts Shown In This Article.

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Picture Source - Pxhere (CC0)

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Hi everyone,

Let's talk about something that will give you the heebie-jeebies. I mean, some people in the world has been traumatised to sleep at night due to the fact that they have experienced something crawling inside of their own ears, and the "thing" might have just stuck in there for eternity if any kind of suction devices or tweezers which was designed for extracting ear wax had never been invented. These creatures, no matter how gross, were impressive in their own way. I mean, can you name me one living thing which can have sex once and stay pregnant for the rest of their freaking life? I know, it's quite interesting, isn't it? That's why when you kill some, either by stomping on them or hitting them with a book, they looked exactly like a smashed boiled egg (white content) which for sure if you were eating, you will feel bloated and full afterwards (maybe sometimes feel like vomiting).

Cockroaches have been evolving to adapt to various environmental conditions since the dawn of Dinosaurs. They have existed for approximately 320 million years ago making them one of the most versatile insects in the animal kingdom. If you were thinking how big can they be when they were living with dinosaurs, well, don't let your imagination runs wild. Most of the ancient species which has been identified as the relatives of the modern cockroaches were much smaller in size. Some of the cockroaches species were found to have intricate social structures with some kind of mechanism to identify respective kin and transmitting information to each other through a specialised organ making us wonder, how intelligent can they be? I mean, they love to crawl and die inside of a human's ears, so they can't be that intelligent, isn't it? Oh well, there is more to them than meets the eye.

Most of the cockroaches measured around the size of an average thumb but some species do look bigger than that (two thumbs maybe?). The largest cockroach ever documented measured around 9.7 cm in length (equivalent to 9 thumbs maybe?), which weighed around 30 g. It was later called Megaloblatta longipennis. I know, I'm shocked too; that's right, the name. Maybe it can be translated directly into "a giant roach with a long penis" or something. Unlike any other insects which have specialised organs situated at the mouth area, a cockroach has a set of mandibles along with a few structures which act as salivary glands, equipped with a variety of receptors. So they might just have to chew foods, grinding it into little pieces before the food can be digested.

Cockroaches As A Part Of Human's Diet

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Picture Source - Pixabay (CC0)

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You might be thinking, why do we want to eat something so disgusting when there were many other things that we can eat to get our tummy full. In a book written by David George Gordon entitled "The Eat-a-bug Cookbook" explained, even though the majority if not all of the household cockroaches were infested with various kind of bacteria and viruses as a consequence of eating from garbages, cockroaches which were bred under a sterile environment, for example, a laboratory is not only clean but can be a highly nutritious food source. There were a few cockroach farms which can be found in China that were committed to raising this creature as a valuable asset, raising quite a number (a million) of them, and when they were "ripe", they will be boiled, dried and finally sold to various restaurants or pharmaceutical companies which will buy them as much as 20 dollars per pound of weight.

They were considered cheap sources of protein which might be required to make certain traditional medicine and cosmetic products (well, if your makeup were made in China, it's probably made up of a cockroach's proteins). You might feel gross by the notion of using a cosmetic product made up of cockroaches but there were a lot of studies which have been published in some of the journal sites regarding treatment of various forms of diseases by an ethnic minority such as tuberculosis. I'm trying my best to find the right article which might indicate the whitish gooey cockroaches contents were working for treating diseases but so far I got nothing. So refrain yourself from using this creature for medical purposes; I wouldn't recommend it.

The cost incurred to raise this creature in a farm is surprisingly low (while generating a lot of ROI); then again, who is in their right mind want to even consider making cockroaches as pets, let alone opening a farm, creating a black hole of squishy potentially pathogenic little creatures (only the hole is filled with a million number of cockroaches). Well, cockroaches have been good business materials for the past couple of years in China and currently, there were over a hundred farms operated by different owners which were usually situated far away from the housing area. I mean, can you imagine, if the farm was built in the friendly-neighbourhood area and one day one of the workers forgot to close the door? A million cockroaches would be invading and the scene whereby someone was buried while being accompanied by man-eating cockroaches from "The Mummy" can actually become true. Gosh, I hope not.

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Picture By Glueball - Wikimedia (CC0)

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"I lost my hair years ago. I made a spray of cockroaches, applied it on my scalp and it grew back. I've used it as a facial mask and people say I haven't changed at all over the years."

I'm not sure how to respond to the above statement. Maybe it works, maybe it did not; I wasn't sure. Why don't you try rubbing those things and we will find out? Anyway, in some places in China particularly for the owner of the cockroaches farm, they often serve some foods related to the insect they were so proud of such as a plate of fried cockroaches to visiting journalists, encouraging them to experience what it feels like to taste foods which are probably better than chickens (I'll stick with the chicken, no thanks). Of course, journalists would be able to make a nice story for their respective work thingy, but at the expense of eating some fried cockroaches. You better eat it or they will be mad at you for being rude. In Taiwan, there were some populations which love to eat cockroaches minus the head especially when their heads were removed.

I think will stop here before I'll be ruining my own appetite to break-fast soon.

Why Do Cockroaches Love To Crawl Into Our Ears?

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Picture Source - Pexels (CC0)

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Have you ever saw your external auditory canal? I mean the place which was filled with ear waxes and possibly some foreign bodies (cotton bud wool maybe). Well if you felt gross by it, you should know that kind of place were fancy enough to be called as the heaven by fellow cockroaches, well except for German cockroaches which are too big to fit into the external canal. I've seen a lot of documentaries regarding insects which have been invading the human's external canal, calling it a home. I've even read a story about someone who felt something crawling inside of his ear, and when he went to see a doctor, there is a spider web in it, with possibly a spider or two. Man, what's so interesting about our external ear canal? Is there some kind of factors which make them a suitable place to be inhabited by certain insects?

Well, I'm not sure about the other insects but for a cockroach, the thing that always has been the factor which attracts this versatile creature is our own ear wax. Some insects, specifically a cockroach can smell and detect floating fatty acids which are usually emitted by food which have been fermented. This suggests that the primary source of fuel for a cockroach is fat and unfortunately for a human, our ear wax emitted the same odour which can be detected by nearby cockroaches. This odour will bait a cockroach so that it will enter willingly into the ear canal until they realised they have stuck in the middle; they can't get it and they certainly can't get out.

Amidst the panic moment, they will start to struggle, wiggling all of its available limbs towards the wall of the external ear canal making us felt itchy at first. When we realised, our ears were itchy, there were two possible mechanisms of scratching that itch:

• You will use your finger to scratch your middle ear canal (at least you were trying to)
• You will use a cotton bud which is much more effective and easily provided you can adjust the depth of whatever you want to scratch

Both of the actions will result in the cockroach being pushed deeper into the structure, sometimes, hurting our tympanic membrane (ear drum) by using that skinny legs. This will cause minor trauma to the ear surface making it more viable for you to get an ear infection courtesy of those garbage-eating insects. Most of the people will realise there was something moving inside of his/her ear, others, do not. They will only realise the fact that their eggs have been a rest and relax station for a cockroach when they go and meet a physician, complaining of an excruciating pain in either ear. It would be worst of while scratching, you were actually pinching the cockroach, making it explode with whitish, jelly-like matter that contains thousands of bacteria.

Before removing this accidental parasite, the doctor or any operator will kill the cockroach by using an analgesic such as lidocaine. That way you will realise the ticklish things which have been happening on the inside of your ear have lost. After that, the operator would use some fancy tools available at their exposure to remove it, making sure the head of the creature was extracted out as well. Leaving its head inside can pose various problems related to the middle ear infection which can extend up to the inner ear causing greater loss of hearing. The most important thing you must remember is when you felt something is moving past your ears, go and consult a doctor. I think I have read somewhere to use coconut oil which will provide some sort of lubricants making it easier for the cockroach to propel themselves out (or in, if you are that unlucky).

Thank you and have a nice day.

References and further reading materials

• Cockroach - Wikipedia. Retrieved on June 8th, 2018.
• Cockroach - Pest World For Kids. Retrieved on June 8th, 2018.
• Cockroaches as a Source of High Bacterial Pathogens with Multidrug Resistant Strains in Gondar Town, Ethiopia. Retrieved on June 8th, 2018.
• Cockroach farms multiplying in China. Retrieved on June 8th, 2018.
• How Common Is It Actually for a Bug to Crawl in Your Ear?. Retrieved on June 8th, 2018.
• Your ears are cockroach heaven and that’s why they keep crawling in there. Retrieved on June 8th, 2018.

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