Demodex: "What our faces always show but we never notice unless we pay more attention"
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On our face, nose and eyelashes... live thousands of small mites that feed on the sebum of our skin and our dead cells. It has been estimated that in an average bed there may be between one hundred thousand and ten million of these dead skin-eating mites. Now, that's what I would call a true ecosystem!
These creatures, which are too small to see with the naked eye, live near the roots of facial hair follicles, where they feed on the sebum produced to keep skin hydrated.
To see them closely, scientists from the California Academy of Sciences collected facial samples from more than 2,000 people through glue, in which they found evidence of mite DNA in each of them. The findings also showed that oilier parts of the body, such as around the eyes, nose and mouth, are likely to harbor a higher concentration of mites. During the day, these mites live inside the pores of our skin and feed on the natural oils that emanate from the face. While at night, they crawl on the surface to mate and then return to lay their eggs.
¡Friends forever!
Demodex folliculurom lives in the pores and follicles of your hair, while Demodex brevis prefers to settle in your oily sebaceous glands.
At present, we don't even know for sure what they feed on. Some people believe that they eat the bacteria on the skin. Others think they just eat dead skin cells or oil from sebaceous glands. But it is not yet known with absolute certainty. So, scientists study the microorganisms that live in the guts of mites since that could eventually help to determine their true diet. Because they could really feed on all of them.
Oh! and as I suppose you were already able to see in the previous video, these strange creatures also have three rather curious characteristics:
The first is that they cannot defecate and expel what they consume because they lack an anus. Therefore, it is also believed that in order to expel what they eat after digestion, they just regurgitates or simply accumulates that waste in their bodies until their death when they explodes, degrading all of that on your face.
The second is that the males have their penis on their backs and, consequently, in the night (since they don't like much the light) when they emerge from their lair inside the pore or hair follicle to the surface of the skin when they are active for the act of copulation and mating, it is the female who mounts the male.
And lastly, demodex are extremely selective in what species they inhabit. In fact there are exclusive demodex for dogs, for cats, for humans (demodex follicolorum and demodex brevis) and for many other mammals too.
So as you can see, we're still not entirely sure what they feed on. But we can always take another close look at them to see if you can guess it.
Hey! what am I feeding on?
So yeah, these critters crave oil, which makes the edges of your eyelids prime real estate. Since each edge is lined with 25 or so sebum-producing glands. These mites aren't crazy about light, so during the day they burrow deep in the eyelash follicles and snooze. They come out at night, while we're sleeping, and everyday they have a wild party mating and munching nonstop on dead skin cells.
But nonetheless, face mites are definitely the species of creatures that we have the closest connection with as humans. Even though most of us don't know about them or never see one of them in our lives, let's clean up and wide open our eyes more often when we meet another human. Cause certainly there's more to see in them.
And to close this post with one last thought. I will do it with an old saying that we will also have to take into account after having shown you everything that I have already shown you. "Never judge a book only by its cover" In this case, book as the euphemism for face. Because what our faces really show, we can never notice unless we pay more attention to what underlies within the invisible world in which we truly find ourselves.
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Was really interesting to read about this creatures.
Who would have imagined.
Yep! we humans are much more than what can be perceived by our limited "six" senses. We are indeed just a bunch of vermin crowded walking communities. Hahahaha
Interesting post.
Many people who have dry skin on the face might just think they naturally developed it.
Demodex infestation can cause dry facial skin. And since the treatment is usually centred around using cream lotions, we never know there was a Demodex invasion on our faces. We blame it on the weather😂😂
That's right, we blame it on the weather, our jobs, the stress, the neighbors, the children, the pets, the water, the air, the sun... uhm... whatever! as long as we don't have to dare looking inside ourselves more carefully. :D
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