It’s getting to be summer time in the Northern Hemisphere and I’m starting to see more creepy-crawlies outside, inside and attacking my personal space. Spiders, mosquitoes and cockroaches are becoming an increasingly common, unpleasant sight. Finding these beasties in random corners of my house and ruthlessly killing them had me thinking about the human-insect relationship, in particular the special one we have with ectoparasites. Ectoparasites depend upon mammals for their survival but there are several that rely on humans specifically and have co-evolved over hundreds of years to inhabit our bodies. Examples include the sucking lice (body, head and crab), bed bugs, fleas and mites.
Naturally, I went to the internet to find pictures and to have an up-lifting, skin-crawling session. There’s one notable ectoparasite that induced the greatest chills and hit all of the gross-out buttons – microscopic size, alien-like appearance, infestation fears and, of course, there’s not much you can do about them living within you. Allow me to introduce the follicle mites Demodex folliculorum and Demodex brevis!
