Illustration: Tiny earwax bees generally evade notice even by the ear doctor.
Earwax bees admittedly stretch the definition of ‘irrelevant.’ While true bees, they lack the wax-producing glands of other bees. Thus, these bees not only have learned to “homestead” in waxy ear canals — they also know where to find the waxiest of them. While music-lovers have pummeled their ears for decades, the preponderance of waxy-eared iPod abusers has created what one could call a “revolution in evolution.” This is because the tiny ear wax bee spends so much time “surfing” in high sound pressure level environments that, in quiet moments, it may quite innocently beat its wings in habitual patterns, solely from muscle memory. The extraordinary result is identical to the effect of “hypersonic” speakers playing in one’s ear canals: phantom songs, disembodied voices, and full-fledged rock concerts originating from inside one’s head. Besides the ramifications for schizophrenia and common audio persistence phenomena, it’s further hypothesized that dogs who bark obsessively may simply be reacting to earwax bees who “know only one word,” as it were.
