A Teenager Pulls A Massive Centipede Out Of His Ear

Centipedes are universally perceived as one of the ugliest arthropods in existence, which is really saying something considering that all insects and arachnids belong to the arthropod phylum. Most centipedes dwell beneath rocks and burrow into the ground below leaf litter. Centipedes also dwell on trees below the bark. However, centipedes do not typically burrow in people’s heads, but one incident that occured three years ago had a teenage boy pulling a four inch centipede out of his own ear.

One morning in late June of 2015, a 14 year old teenager named Grant Botti awoke to an excruciating pain in his left ear. After having gently poked into his ear a few times, Botti felt something move. Botti then pulled a living four inch centipede out of his ear. Botti’s horrified mother immediately responded by placing the specimen within a plastic bag. Both Grant and his mother were creeped out to discover that the centipede was still alive and moving around within the clear plastic bag. Grant’s mother did not waste much time before rushing her son to the emergency room for a checkup, which seems in order considering the situation. As it turned out, Grant’s mom may have saved her son from developing hearing loss, as the centipede caused an infection by damaging certain parts of Grant’s inner ear. The centipede caused abrasions in Grant’s eardrum and ear canal. When the doctors and nurses heard that the teenager had pulled a centipede from his ear, they were in disbelief. The medical staff had seen a variety of different arthropods extracted from people’s ears, but they had never even heard of a centipede lodged within an ear.

Neither the teenager nor his mother had any idea as to how the centipede accessed Grant’s inner ear, but the teenager believed that he may have acquired it while swimming at a beach a couple of days prior to the incident. Luckily, Grant received treatment for his inner ear damage, and he was expected to make a full recovery.

Have you ever found a house centipede crawling on your skin?