A woman who kept hearing clicking and rustling sounds was found to have a spider crawling around inside her left ear.
The 64-year-old from Taiwan, who was not named, went to hospital after battling the symptoms for four days, which became unbearable and left her unable to sleep.
Doctors quickly found the tiny spider that was about the size of a pin, along with its shedded skin beside it.
The arachnid was removed via a suction device. The woman suffered no damage to her ear canal or long term effects.
Woman from Taiwan, 64, has had a spider removed from her ear after it became lodged inside for four days
She had been hearing constant rustling and clicking noises which left her unable to sleep
The bizarre case was revealed in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The spider was found in the woman’s ear in April this year, with the rustling noises beginning one morning after the woman woke up.
Tiny creatures do occasionally get inside ears, accounting for around one in eight cases where foreign objects got lodged in ears.
Others previously seen in the ear include tiny ants, cockroaches, moths and mosquitoes.
They can climb in via the outer ear canal and make their way to the ear drum — or tympanic membrane — causing patients to hear constant sounds.
Doctors often remove them using a device called a suction cannula — which can be placed into the ear to remove tiny objects.
Doctors say they are likely to be heard by patients because the skin around the eardrum is extremely sensitive.
But they say it is best not to attempt to remove the insects, with most cases of people suffering damage linked to attempts to remove the creatures.
Dr Stacey Ishman, an ear, nose and throat expert at the University of Wisconsin, told NBC: ‘Most of the time the ear is completely fine.
‘If there’s some injury to the ear canal, quite honestly it’s more often from people trying to get it out than it is from the bug itself.’
A safe way to get insects out of the ear is to pour in vegetable or olive oil, doctors say, which could drown the creature or let it slide out.
Another method is to pour lidocaine or ethanol into the ear to kill the insect, to stop it from moving and damaging the ear.
But people who have holes in their ear drum should avoid this, doctors say, because of the risk of damage to the ear drum.
It comes after a New Zealand man had a cockroach pulled out of his ear after he felt it wriggling for three days.
Zane Wedding, from Auckland, went to the doctor on Saturday with what he thought was water stuck in his ear canal after a day of swimming.
He had his ear syringed, was given antibiotics and then sent home but decided to go to an ear specialist on Monday because he could still feel a squirming sensation.
The specialist realised Wedding had a now-dead cockroach in his ear and managed to extract the insect – and was gifted it as a memento from the patient.
‘It made me physically ill,’ Wedding told the NZ Herald, describing the ordeal.
The doctor was just as shocked as he was, Mr Wedding said, proclaiming ‘Oh my god’ when she realised what he had stuck in his ear canal.
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