I could have been much happier not knowing this.
New fear.
Exactly what I thought. Thanks for the new fear, brotha! I hated these guys growing up. Think I still do. They were always around a pool changing area, and that set a fear in me for life I believe.
I didn’t see these until I was 10 or so, when we moved further south. They were equal parts cool and horrifying, but they made my mother uncomfortable. So she would call the kids out to mash them if she saw one. Became a regular service. We even drew up a logo for it at one point - a kind of cartoonish earwig with the no symbol around it.
That’s great! Thanks for sharing that. 🪳🚫
That is actually why they are called earwigs, its an old english word that’s describing the shape of their wings which kind of looks like a human ear.
So you’re telling me it’s NOT because they like to crawl into your ears while you’re asleep?
If you want to lose the solace that fact has provided you, here’s another possibly also false but no less comforting bit of trivia:
spoiler
Leeches after feeding would love nothing more than a dark, somewhat moist, somewhat warm, somewhat tight environment. Which a human has and is probably something you don’t want a leech to get anywhere near, be glad there’s no such thing as a Analwig. Oh and land leeches exist.
This is blowing my mind right now… Those things gave me nightmares as a kid thinking they crawl into people’s ears…
That’s where this insect family gets its latin name: Dermaptera, i.e. “skin wing”, as the wings are usually hidden under a leathery flap. They also are super complex in the way they unfold from under these flaps.
Also, earwigs are completely harmless and cool and should be left alone. If anything, they can be beneficial in gardens, as they hunt other, harmful insects.
Harmless in the sense that they aren’t dangerous, but they are capable of biting. Source: one was in my headphones a few years back and was biting my ear. I initially thought my headphones were just really itchy.
In my headphones!
shudders
I still check my headphones every time before putting them on now
I guess that’s why they call them earwigs
I regrettably went to wiki to read more and found this unsettling fact:
“The largest extant species is the Australian giant earwig (Titanolabis colossea) which is approximately 50 mm (2 in) long”
