Spider Found Crawling Inside Ear of Taiwanese Woman After Complaining to Hear 'Unusual Sounds' [VIDEO]

A spider was found crawling inside the ear of a Taiwanese woman after complaining to doctors of hearing "unusual sounds" for several days, according to a medical case report by the medical practitioners who attended to the patient.

The 64-year-old woman survived the ordeal despite being the host of a tiny spider that burrowed deep in her ear canal. The species of the said arachnid remains unknown. However, its small size allowed it to go initially unnoticed.

The case highlighted in the medical report is one of the several instances where insects, ranging from flies to worms, and other microscopic bugs, enter a human's body. While some of these creatures have been reported to be parasitic by nature, most bugs prefer not to enter one's body and feed on it, according to experts. However, such events are still a medical concern since some previous cases resulted in fatalities.

Ear Canal Spider Case

The medical case report was published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on Thursday, October 26, which explored the bizarre case of a small spider and its exoskeleton found in the ear canal of the Taiwanese woman. The report was conducted by Liyin Weng and Tengchin Wang, which are both from Tainan Municipal Hospital and Tainan City, Taiwan.

The authors stated that the woman with hypertension, prior to her admission at the clinic, had a four-day history of "incessant clicking and rustling sounds" in her left ear; which prevented her from sleeping during the said period. Initially, the woman reportedly complained of feeling that something was moving inside her ear.

Spider and Exoskeleton

Doctors at Tainan Municipal Hospital then examined the woman's ear and it was during this time they discovered the small spider, as well as its discarded exoskeleton. The medical team used a suction tube into her ear and were able to remove the arachnid and its exoskeleton.

According to Wang, the woman did not feel any pain while the spider was inside her ear canal since the arachnid's size was only about 0.08 to 0.1 inches (2 to 3 millimeters).

In a post on X, formerly called Twitter, the NEJM posted a video of the spider shown to be moving within the external auditory canal of the woman's left ear, where the molted exoskeleton of the spider was also present. The post garnered at least 1.4 million views and over 3,000 likes.

Insects Found Inside Human Body

Insects can enter the human body, whether they are parasitic by nature or not, as mentioned earlier. In fact, Wang recalled that he had already seen ants, cockroaches, mosquitoes, and moths inside people's ears before. Yet, the case of the Taiwanese woman is novel since the spider molted inside her ear canal.

Earlier in 2023, a similar case also involved a woman who had been reported to experience tinnitus and ear pain, only to find by a doctor that a spider was inside her ear during an endoscopy.