2394 Mitey Odd

I've written a few commentaries over the years about mites, notably dust mites, and their contribution to the creation of dust bunnies as they chew and process our skin flakes.  Dust mites have it easy.  Not like the face mites I read about in National Geographic.  They are mitey odd.

Face mites?  We have face mites?  Yep.  As author and scientist Rob Dunn puts it, "They are so small a dozen of them could live on the head of a pin."  So how many do you think could live on your head? 

They actually live in your hair follicle pores.  Why not?  Certain species of mites live in feathers, others in rabbit ears, making the rabbits scratch and then drinking the fluid the scratching causes.  You mite say they go on an ooze bender.

There are currently 2 species of face mites known to science, but nature in its infinite wisdom has certainly come up with more. 

There's no reason to be alarmed.  Another researcher says that mites are just one example of the wild life we all carry with us everyday in our body's different ecological niches.  Or is the ick-ological?  Tiny creatures are crawling on us and in us from brow to bowel every minute. 

I feel sorry for the face mite though.  Even though living on its host's sebum seems like a good gig, nature evolved a nasty way of dying for the poor little boogers. 

After mother mites give birth, in their pore home, the young mites grow.  When they're adults they only live for a few weeks.  Rob Dunn says, "Death comes at the precise moment when the mites, lacking an anus, fill up with feces, die, and decompose on your head." 

Gotta love nature.  But I'm sure glad we evolved differently. 

America, ya gotta love it.