#1005 Ear Query

A thought recently flew into my head. Why do we have earwax? Wax is not something that any other part of our body manufactures. We have sweat and spit and oily secretions on our face and hair. But nowhere else on the body is there a place that produces wax, except the ears.
Thank goodness for the internet. I went to Google and typed in the search phrase, “why ear wax.” I figured if I had the question, somebody else had the question, and somebody else had already answered it.
I was right. The little drop down box on the main Google query window said 1,180,000 people had asked the question exactly that way. Why Ear Wax. It was eerie.
The top hit was an Earwax FAQ page.
Wow, Earwax FAQs, we are such a curious species.
Anyhow, here are some earwax things you might like to hear. The first? It’s not wax. It’s produced by your cerumen glands. Cerumen glands are only in your ear canals. It’s your sebaceous glands in other parts of your skin that make it greasy. They produce sebum.
Sebum and cerumen. Sound like medieval angels don’t they? The angels of secretions. Sebum and Cerumen.
The purpose of earwax is interesting. It’s a sticky substance meant to trap particles flying into your ears. It traps anything foreign that flies, blows, or crawls in. Dirt, pollen, small insects, and even bacteria are trapped by the wax.
The Doctor on the FAQ, Douglas Hoffman, says to think of it as the sticky stuff on a No Pest strip.
Now there’s an image. Forget piercing as a counterculture adornment, spread some of that stuff on your external ear and you could be walking around studded with dead flies.
And darn, I had no idea when I was wielding the morning Q-tip that I was compromising my ability to trap flying pests.
The point is, your ears are kind of like pitcher plants or Venus flytraps. Except they don’t digest the flies, they just keep them from doing damage further in.
Still, who wants to think of their ears being the earwig equivalent of a roach motel?
That should be my next Google ear-y query.
America, ya gotta love it.