A woman who began hearing weird noises discovered that she had a spider in her ear, complete with an exoskeleton it had shed while inhabiting her brain.
The 64-year-old arrived at an otolaryngology clinic after experiencing four days of unusual thumping, clicking, and rustling sounds that kept her awake. According to a case study on her ordeal, she had a pretty good sense of what was going on because she awoke on the day the symptoms began with the sensation of a monster moving around within her ear.
“On physical examination, a small spider was seen moving within the external auditory canal of the left ear,” the doctors said in the case report, adding in a horrifying sentence: “The spider’s molted exoskeleton was also present.”
The scientists captured video of it creeping around within, near its discarded exoskeleton.
The species is not specified in the case report, which is obviously more concerned with the medical issues of a spider turning an ear into a studio apartment. However, a zoologist and a biologist told Ars Technica that it is from the Salticidae family of jumping spiders, a very mobile species and that it is most likely a youngster because it has shed its exuvia (exoskeleton).
“Many hunting spiders (i.e., those that do not live in prey-capture webs) seek a sheltered location for the purpose of molting, as they cannot defend themselves from predators during that process,” Jerry Rovner, an emeritus biology professor at Ohio University, explained to Ars Technica.
Suction was used to extract the spider and exoskeleton from the woman’s ear, and her symptoms instantly stopped.v
