Meet the creepy crawlies that have sex on your FACE while you sleep: Terrifying footage reveals dozens of eight-legged mites wiggling on our skin
While you’re dozing off to sleep this evening, just know that tiny eight-legged mites less than a millimetre long are having sex on your face.
Described as looking like ‘tardigrades with big butts’, Demodex are part of the arachnid class, making them cousins of spiders and ticks.
They usually come out at night to feast on dead skin cells on our face before retreating to hair follicles and oil glands to lay their eggs.
Despite their frightful appearance, these mites are harmless and will go unnoticed, and can even help your skin by removing dead skin cells.
James Weiss, a microscopist at Bournemouth University with passion for microbial life, captured the new footage of Demodex that were living on his own face.
He saw a little black dot on his forehead, which he scraped with a glass slide before taking a look under the microscope and filming it.
‘Learning there are little animals crawling around your face might be a little unsettling,’ said host Hank Green.
‘But here’s the thing – we pretty much all have them.
‘Perhaps we can find some space in our hearts for these little mites.
‘They’re even cute under the harsh glare of our UV light.’
The images show spherical droplets in the end of the Demodex body, which are oil droplets and the digested remains of sebum from our skin.
Male and female mites usually mate inside a follicle opening before the eggs are laid inside the hair follicles and oil glands.
What’s more, they are able to fuel all-night mating sessions using the melatonin secreted by human skin at dusk.
Males have a penis that protrudes upwards from the front of their body – meaning they have to position themselves underneath the female when mating and copulate as they both cling onto the human hair.
Larvae hatch within three to four days and reach adulthood after seven days, but their lifespan is usually only about two weeks.
Demodex measure around 0.01 of an inch (0.3mm) long, which is too small to see with the naked eye, and tend to be passed on through close contact with family members.
Around 65 species of Demodex are known but only two live on humans – Demodex folliculorum and Demodex brevis.
D. folliculorum is found in hair follicles, while D. brevis lives in sebaceous glands connected to hair follicles.
Scientists estimate that somewhere between 23 per cent and 100 per cent of healthy adults have Demodex, although we wouldn’t know about it until they cause skin problems.
Some researchers had assumed these little mites do not have an anus and therefore must accumulate all their faeces through their lifetimes before releasing it when they die, causing skin inflammation.
However, a study published last year by University of Reading experts showed that they do have anuses after all and so have been ‘unfairly blamed’ for many skin conditions.
Even so, D. folliculorum can cause Demodicosis, an itchy, irritating condition resulting from a sensitivity to and overpopulation of the species. Another Demodex species called D. canis resides on dogs rather than humans but also causes Demodicosis, leading to patches of fur loss and red inflamed skin. The University of Reading study also said that Demodex are becoming simplified organisms and may soon ‘become one with humans’. Inbreeding and isolation means they have shed genes and cells and are moving closer to a permanent existence with us, it said.
Source: daily mail
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Meet the creepy crawlies that have sex on your FACE while you sleep: Terrifying footage reveals dozens of eight-legged mites wiggling on our skin