What the Mites On Your Face Say About Where You Came From (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes with news about how the hair mites you carry can be used to determine your ancestry. "Right now, deep in your hair follicles and sweat glands, tiny mites are feeding on dead skin cells, mating, and laying eggs. The microscopic arthropods, known as Demodex folliculorum, live on virtually all mammals—especially their faces—and cause no harm under most circumstances. Now, a new study shows that people of different ancestry carry different subgroups of the bugs, and that the mites' distribution throughout the global population may even reflect how our species has migrated and evolved over the course of history."

Comments

Seems unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

This mite have been true before motels and air travel, but now I'd be shocked to find any two "first world" people on the planet that don't have a face-mite-bacon-distance of 6 or less.

Even if you're a virgin (this IS slashdot), I'm sure you've slept somewhere where someone else slept who slept with someone or in a motel where someone who just flew in from the other side of the globe.

tl;dr: Your face gets around.

Are we born with them?

[shione]

When we are born we are so clean that even our stomachs do not have bacteria. It is hypothesized that our first dose of this bacteria comes from normal child birth and then we are put in our mothers arms so kissing and cuddling further transfers the bacteria. Is this cuddling and kissing where we get the first face mites too or are we born with them?