ELI5- Earwax: Where’s it coming from and what’s it doing?
In: Biology
Have you ever wondered what would happen if a roach or a fly crawled into your ear and got stuck there?
The answer is earwax.
It’s made by the skin in the ear canal specifically to protect and clean the inner bits of the ear, while also allowing the ear canal to be a small enough hole to keep things like errant fingers and sticks from getting into it.
If you leave your ears alone, they become self-cleaning under normal circumstances. The ear wax is continuously produced and slowly works its way out of the ear canal, carrying the little bits that get into your ear canal out with it.
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The Stuff You Should Know podcast did an episode on this fairly recently if you want to give it a listen.
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