Can you really get ants in your pants?

The phrase 'ants in your pants' may well be an idiom for squirming about, but I once got real ants in my pants when I was five years old, and I remember to this day (1) running home to my mum as fast as hell because all hell was going off inside my shorts and (2) I was dancing and screaming - most certainly not merely squirming.

It was 1964, in England, and I was sitting on a wall with a few friends. I remember we were looking at a jet plane in the sky when I had an immediate urge to up and run home because of a terribly painful stinging mass attack going on all of a sudden in my pants. My mum pulled  me inside the house, pulled down my shorts and pants and there all over my private parts was a mass of black ants. She got a wet cloth and got them all off. It was an extremely hot day and my Mum said they had gone into my pants to get salt from my sweat.

I've never met anyone else who has actually had ants in their pants. I know its not a myth that it can happen - just like getting an earwig in your ear. But is it rare? Probably it is extremely rare if you are sitting on the couch watching TV, but possibly less rare if you sit on top of, or close to, an ants nest like I did? Let's see what the  self-appointed 'experts' and 'skeptics' on the net have to say.

(1) Answers.com is useless (seems to be run by unimaginative and non-laterally thinking high school teachers) - they do not answer the question posed "Why do you get ants in your pants" because they think its a mere idiom and are not dealing with the question on a literal level. Here.
(2) Urban dictionary is similarly unhelpful. Here.
(3) Here is a story about  a guy who got ants in his pants while they were off his body and on the floor.

Other than that - ten minutes of searching on Google asking "Can you really get ants in your pants?" reveals no answers. So here, Mythbusters, we have a strangely unexplored area. Verdict: more research needed.

The Earwig Myth: Probed by Mythbusterperson

Do Earwigs really crawl into your ear?

Let us examine some sources you might visit online to find out.

According to the self appointed experts on Yahoo answers the answer is a definite no: http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070707221753AAj0iIC

What about the incredibly reliable Wikipedia then – which is the source the above virtual ‘clinicians’ relied upon?

Well they say it’s a myth that they lay eggs in your bran (true - I think) and that its rare that these insects crawl into your ear –also possibly true. But if it is true that its rare (which we need to check) just how rare is it? Has anyone actually collected data on the subject?  Because the myth is an old one and - actually - it does happen.

Unless this MD is having a laugh - here is some disconfirming evidence that its a myth that earwigs crawl in your ear:

JEFFREY R. FISHER. MD (1986) West J Med. 1986 August; 145(2): 245 

Earwig in the Ear

'Earwigs are nocturnal, drab-colored insects

of the order Dermaptera that are attracted to light and occasionally creep into homes. Their chewing mouthparts and forceps-like abdominal appendages give them a foreboding appearance.

The common name for these anthropods in at least six

European languages incorporates a word for ear. The extended hindwing of some species resembles the shape of a human ear and the earwig's pincers look like instruments once used to pierce women's ears for earrings. Furthermore, there

is an ancient Anglo-Saxon legend that they crawl into the ears

of sleeping persons. Entomologists, however, insist that this

belief is without foundation.`13 The following is the second

report from Arizona-and also only the second in English

literature-to document the veracity of the legend.

At 3 AM, my 8-year-old daughter awoke me from a sound

sleep. She was extremely upset. For the preceding few minutes she had attempted to remove a creature crawling about in  her left external ear canal. A light sleeper, she had been aroused by "the sound of little feet." Otoscopic examination revealed a dark brown mass near the tympanic membrane.

My brief discussion with her on the importance of proper

hygiene was interrupted when I saw the form move. Then,

bathed in brilliant illumination from the otoscope, a female

earwig (family, Carcinophoridae), measuring 20 mm in

length, cautiously emerged, to the relief of insect, child and

father.

Earwigs do not, as once believed, enter the brain to cause

insanity but they can enter the external ear canal while we

sleep. Some species pinch sharply and forcibly eject a highly

irritating fluid from abdominal glands.4 In the previous re

port5 a male European earwig (Forficula auricularia) punctured and lacerated the tympanic membrane of a sleeping graduate student in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Earwigs are relatively harmless and, in all likelihood,

enter the human ear rarely and only by chance. Nevertheless,

they can produce severe otic trauma lending credence to an

ancient "myth."

 Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1306897/pdf/westjmed00156-0105a.pdf

Ok so it could well be true that it happens. Is there any evidence that suggests we need to look further into this?

I trawled the net of 5 mins this morning and found the following:

1. http://www.blurtit.com/q165415.html - confirmative
2. Top 10 animal myths says it’s a myth – looks like they are wrong on that one: http://animal.discovery.com/tv/a-list/creature-countdowns/myths/myths-02.html
3. Check out what Tiff says on this site (scroll down it a bit to see comments) http://somethingscrawlinginmyhair.com/2008/08/30/male-european-earwig-dermaptera/

OK Mythbusters – looks worthy of further investigation. The orthodox ‘knowledge’ that earwigs entering your ear is an extremely rare event may or may not be true.

It seems logical that if you don't sleep near earwigs it will be highly unlikely that one would craw in your ear. But what if you slept near them? Earwigs like dark places to sleep. If you have and earwig problem in your garden, for example, put an old cup, upended, on top of a stick in the ground and you will catch earwigs that have gone into it to sleep. Your ear is, similarly, a dark place to sleep with a roof on it - like a little cave. The telling question here is: in countries where people sleep closer to nature is the incidence of being ear-wigged  greater?

Verdict – more thorough research required. And one more telling question: what  exactly does extremely rare actually mean?