Science Says We All Have Bugs Living on Our Faces
Here's something gross: According to a new study, you have hundreds of tiny bugs living on your face. Yes, you. No matter how hard you just went and scrubbed your greasy nose, they're still there, with eight legs and — for the males at least — tiny penises. Like we said, this is something gross. Really, really gross.
The face bugs aren't actually something new. Scientists have known about mites that live on human skin for many years, but they thought only a small percentage of us had them. The reason? The previous studies looked for human DNA on mites, instead of looking for mite DNA on humans. Megan Thoemmes, a graduate student in biology at North Carolina State University, took the latter route. Her and her team sampled more than 250 people and found that 100 percent of them had mites.
In fact, there were two different types of mites. The Demodex brevis burrows into our sweat glands and the other type — the Demodex folliculorum — lives in the millions of hair follicles located on our heads. Either way, they're both nasty sounding. "They're semi-transparent, they have eight legs, they kind of look like a tiny, in a way, see-through caterpillar," a scientist told CBC news.
Not much is known beyond the fact that we all have these mites on our faces. For starters, we don't know where they've come from. "Scientists don't know how the mites spread among humans; one theory is that they're passed on from mother to child while breast-feeding," reported NPR. "Young people are much less likely to have them, while they've been found on almost all cadavers. The mites probably crawl on our faces at night, when it's dark."
The one thing they do know is that while there are two types, they're split into a bunch of different mutations. Which mites do you have? Well, as Gwen Pearson over at Wired notes, it partly depends on where you live.
"D. brevis mites of people in China, North, and South America were far more genetically diverse than D. folliculorum mites. This matches the biology of the two species pretty well. The larger folliculorum species is more gregarious and active, so mixes up its genes more often. The smaller brevis species is more isolated, so mutations and genetic drift accumulate as genetic variation in isolated little pore populations. The variation also seems to echo our human genetic history; as human populations split and diverged 40,000 years ago, so did our mite lineages."
Thoemmes is not grossed out by these mites. She referred to them as "friends" and told NPR "Realizing that everyone has them and they're likely not causing any problems, it's pretty reassuring." Sure it is. Sure it is. We're still going to buy some face soap. Like, a lot of it.
[Image via Wikimedia Commons - Blauerauerhahn]
