You may not be aware that you have living creatures with you all the time. They’re called tiny mites and they live inside or near the hair follicles of your face.
Most of the mites are Demodex folliculorum and Demodex Brevis and are from the animal group Arachnida, which includes ticks, spiders, scorpions, and harvestmen. Their more familiar names though include eyelash mites, follicle mites, face mites, and skin mites.
Although found all over the human body, they exist mainly on the face. D. brevis live in sebaceous glands of the hair follicles and D. folliculorum is found in the follicles themselves.
The mite have pin-shaped mouthparts for eating skin cells and skin oils. Since they avoid light, they usually crawl to a new location at night. They can be transferred from one person to another through contact with someone's hair, eyebrows, or sebaceous glands.
The eggs they lay inside your hair follicles or sebaceous glands hatch in a few days and become adults within a week.
It is rare for anyone to have an allergic reaction to them or even notice them at all. Scientists are not sure what purpose they serve on our skin, but they know that the older you are, the more mites you will have.
Researchers continue to investigate these tiny animals.