Doctors shocked to discover this living thing in a woman's ear canal (VIDEO)

Updated on November 1, 2023 at 10:02 AM

After complaining of rattling noises in her ear, a patient learned that a living creature had lodged itself in her ear canal.

This article may not please entomophobes. If the sight of even the tiniest mosquito, ant or cockroach repels you, you'd better move on. In Asia, a 60-year-old woman reported hearing strange noises in her ear. After examination, doctors realized that these noises were not due to disease or malformation, but to the presence of an insect in her ear canal. A video of the inside of his ear was even taken.

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A vision of horror in her ear

The patient's name has not been released, but she is known to live in Taiwan and is 64 years old. According to The Sun, she felt a 'strange sensation' in her ear and heard scratching noises. The noises were so loud that she was unable to sleep.

The woman went to the Tainan Municipal Hospital to undergo a battery of tests. It was there that the doctors discovered, to their horror, the tiny living spider that had taken up residence in her ear canal. This unusual case was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. One of the doctors said:

She didn't feel any pain because the spider was very small, on the order of two to three millimetres.

The spider had even shed its skin

To add insult to the injury, the spider was so comfortable that it had time to molt. In a video published to mark the occasion, it can be seen moving not far from a silhouette resembling itself - its former 'skin'.

Thanks to a small tube, the doctors were fortunately able to clean her ear and purge it of the arachnid. The video is available below, and we leave you free to click (or not) on it.

A woman with hypertension presented to the clinic with a 4-day history of abnormal sounds in her ear. On examination, a small spider was seen moving within the external auditory canal of the left ear. The molted exoskeleton of the spider was also present. https://t.co/dye2sbbiL9 pic.twitter.com/SfeNBBGQS8
— NEJM (@NEJM) October 25, 2023