Cockroach crawls into Chinese woman's eardrum and chews a small hole

A woman in Guangzhou woke up to a nightmare scenario - the feeling of a bug crawling into her ear.

Two days later, doctors told her that the cockroach had chewed a small hole in her eardrum.

The Guangzhou Daily reported on Thursday (July 19) than Ms Liao (not her real name), 20, experienced a sudden pain in her right ear and the feeling that an insect was scuttling about inside.

Unable to remove it using her fingers, she attempted to drip peanut oil into her ear to get rid of the pest.

"After I applied the oil, the cockroach in my ear stopped moving, and because I was busy with work and had no time, I only visited the hospital after two days," she said.

Dr Huang Danyuan at Ren Kang Hospital in Dongguan City, Guangzhou, said that cases of insects climbing into ear holes to bite the eardrum are not uncommon.

"I see at least one such case every one or two months on average, and the patients tend to live on the ground floor in humid and not very hygienic environments," he added.

In June, a man from Florida in the United States had a similar experience with a cockroach taking up residence in his ear. He experienced the death throes of the insect as doctors dripped a chemical into his ear to kill it.

In April, another Florida resident lived with a cockroach in her ear for nine days before it was killed.