With all of the terrible articles you can find on the net about demodex mites (delighting to tell us about about how they eat, defecate and reproduce in your skin; and how they are actually `spiders’) it is nice to read a well written article full of real facts about demodex mites.

You Almost Certainly Have Mites On Your Face

by Ed Yong

August 27, 2014

There are more than 48,000 species of mites. As far as we know, exactly two of those live on human faces. While their relatives mostly look like lozenges on spindly legs, face-mites are more like wall plugs—long cones with stubby legs at one end. They don’t look like much, and most of us have never looked at one at all.

Here are some of the more interesting extracts;

• They live in our hair follicles, buried head-down, eating the oils we secrete
• If you want to find humanity’s best friend, ignore dogs; instead, swab a pore and grab a microscope.
• We host two species: Demodex folliculorum (bigger, round-bottomed) and Demodex brevis (smaller, short-bottomed).
• In 1976, legendary mite specialist William Nutting wrote“One can conclude that wherever mankind is found, hair follicle mites will be found and that the transfer mechanism is 100% effective!
• Unless you’re scraping and taping and plucking all over someone’s face, you might miss their mites.
• the mites seem to become more common with age. They’re rare on babies, more common on teenagers, and universal in adults. No one really knows where we get them from.

Want more ? have a read of All You Ever Wanted to Know About Demodex Mites for more demodex facts you can actually trust.

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