In August 2015, Shreya Darji, a 12-year-old girl from Deesa, Gujarat, India, began to feel a strange irritation in one of her ears. Her parents took her to the doctor and discovered something they could hardly have imagined: there were ants inside her ear canal.
The doctors managed to remove around 9 or 10 insects during one of the first appointments, but the problem didn’t end there. Two weeks later, the ants appeared again. According to the family, approximately 10 live ants would come out of her ears in a single day.
Over the following months, specialists managed to remove more than 1.000 ants. The baffling thing was that they couldn’t find the source of the problem. Dr. Jawahar Talsania, a surgeon specializing in ear, nose and throat medicine, said they had performed an MRI and a CT scan, but both tests had come back normal.
“We can’t find any abnormalities in her ears“, Talsania explained. Even more strangely, although the ants could bite her, Shreya didn’t feel any significant pain, and the doctors found no damage to her eardrums either.
The specialists even used a camera to examine the inside of her ear for a possible colony. However, they didn’t find a queen ant. Talsania explained that without a queen, the ants couldn’t be forming a colony and laying eggs inside the ear, so the source of the insects remained a mystery.
The situation was also affecting the girl’s daily life. Her father, Sanjay Darji, said he was worried about her future and her studies because Shreya had already missed classes. “I’m worried about her future and how this will affect her studies“, he said.
The case became known internationally in February 2016, when photos and videos of doctors removing ants from Shreya’s ear began circulating. But the story took an unexpected turn: months later, her father said that the insects had finally stopped appearing. By July 2016, Shreya had gone approximately two months without any ants coming out of her ears.
The girl herself summed up the relief she felt after almost a year with the strange problem: “Everything is fine now, and I feel much calmer“.