- Parasite.
The word itself is enough to invoke chills,
and the wilderness is absolutely teeming with them.
Some of them seek to suck our blood for nutrition,
while others invade our bodies,
and some, well, it turns out,
they were right under our noses the entire time.
You've got a crazy monster on the screen.
You're telling me this micro-animal is living
on my face right now?
- With a hundred percent certainty,
you have these face parasites.
(dramatic music) (rocks crumbling)
(mysterious music)
- What if I told you that you had thousands
of microscopic animals living on your face?
Would you believe me?
Well, let me first start
by saying I didn't believe it either,
but the truth about what resides
on our most recognizable body feature is right out
of a science fiction movie.
And no, you're not entering "The Twilight Zone",
you're entering the reality zone,
and are about to learn of the bizarre alien-like communities
that live on 99% of our faces.
Yes, that means your face too.
And if you'd rather not know,
I suggest you stop watching here,
but what fun would that be?
You clicked on this video
because your curiosity brought you here,
but let me warn you, once the truth is revealed,
there is no going back.
All right, we are back in the lab with Dr. Hunter Hines,
our good friend who helps us explore the microbial world,
and hunter, you've got a crazy looking microbial monster
of sort on the screen, what is that?
- [Hunter] Yeah, this is actually a parasite.
- [Mark] A parasite, I mean,
certainly looks like a parasite, super menacing looking.
Where would you find these?
- [Hunter] So these parasites live on human faces.
- Human faces, crazy, so where in the world?
What humans have these parasites?
- You have them, Mark, yeah.
Thanks for bringing them.
(record scratches)
- Wait, like right now, or like sometimes?
- Right now. - Like when I'm dirty?
- Right now.
- You're telling me that crazy looking microbial monster
is living on my face right now?
- With a hundred percent certainty,
you have these face parasites.
- Okay, I'm not going to argue with the doctor,
but I'm a little skeptical here.
How can we like attempt to show or prove this?
- Yeah, we have to just sample your face.
- Sample my face, that sounds painful.
- No, not too much.
- Not too much?
All right, well, if he says so, let's sample my face.
All right, so just right there?
- Yeah, right there.
- [Mark] To take a face sample, we use our fingernails
to collect dead oily skin and sebum from our faces,
and once we build up enough, we scrape the waxy slick
right across the slide for the microscope.
And with any luck,
we've snagged a few face mites in the process.
- [Hunter] Oh yeah, you got face parasite, Mark.
Took about five seconds.
- (laughs) Not even, oh my goodness.
- [Hunter] There it is. (Mark laughs)
- [Mark] Oh, you were not kidding.
You sure you didn't slip that slide in
from another sample, right?
- [Hunter] This is all you, Mark.
- Oh my goodness.
That is a face parasite that just literally came
from the crevice of my nose.
Look at it move.
You know, it kind of reminds me a lot
of the tardigrades from our first video with Hunter
that we sampled from a natural spring,
but this is a much different animal.
- Yeah, it looks similar, I mean, it has eight legs,
so it's an arachnid, it's related to spiders and ticks.
(record scratches) - Spiders and,
wait, an arachnid? - Yeah.
- So, okay, get this, not only is it bad enough
that these face mites live on our skin,
but they're also arachnids related to spiders?
- [Hunter] Yes, exactly.
- [Mark] (laughs) Oh man.
It's taking arachnophobia to a whole new level, whew.
What are they on our face doing exactly?
Besides creeping me out.
- Yeah, so these things,
they live in your hair follicles.
They're eating dead skin cells and they're eating some
of the sebum, which is the natural oil your skin produces,
and you see the shape, it actually orients itself head down,
and they back up out of the hair follicle at night.
- And there's no way to rid your body of these?
So everybody at home watching,
you have these also, but these are natural.
- They're natural, they're part of your normal flora
and fauna which live on the human body,
and as we notice, a lot of microbes live on
and inside of humans, yeah.
- Including micro-animals. - Yeah.
- And these aren't a bad thing,
these are actually probably essential.
- They're right on the border, we call them a parasite,
but they're probably more commensalism,
so they're benefiting, we're not being harmed.
Might even be mutualism, where we're benefiting as well.
They're eating some of our dead skin cells,
they're clearing out some of the pores,
so they could be a good thing
and your body keeps them in check either way.
- Okay.
It eats all the dead stuff on our face,
in our skin, in the pores.
Is it also going to the bathroom on our face?
- Actually, they never go to the bathroom.
- [Mark] How's that?
- No, it all just stays in this tail part here,
and then when they die, it all just explodes at once.
- Like a microbial poop bomb?
- Exactly.
- Ugh.
And how long are they there for?
Are they there for like a day, an hour?
- So they live their entire life cycle in and on your face,
and they have about a 14 day life cycle,
so they're fully mature at seven days.
- Oh, great, so you just made me think of something else.
They're actually not only just living on our faces,
they're breeding on our faces.
Are these, like they give live birth, is it eggs?
- They lay eggs, yeah. - All right.
- [Hunter] Little heart shaped eggs, yeah.
- All right, so as if the face mites
themselves weren't enough, you have face mite eggs
all in your skin pores.
Woo, you learn a lot here in the lab, Hunter.
- [Hunter] You sure do, Mark, yeah.
- Okay, well, Hunter, thank you very much
for showing us this very bizarre creature.
I can't believe this actually came off my face,
I'm still trying to process that, but at any rate,
it's very cool, very interesting, and don't worry,
your face mites aren't doing you any harm either.
I'm Mark Vins.
- I'm Dr. Hunter Hines.
- We'll see ya on the next microbial adventure.
(intriguing music)
Okay, so I hope this video didn't freak you out too much,
but seriously, how in the world isn't this more well known?
Please share with your friends
so everyone can know about these human face arachnids.
And if you want to learn more about some wild microbes,
click on the next video to see our adventure
to find the infamous brain eating amoeba.
Everything past this barrier is potentially contaminated
with this pathogen.
The only place we wanna see naegleria fowleri
is underneath the microscope.
(creatures growl) (birds chirp)