You have very small mites living on your face right now. There are hundreds to thousands of them. They're invisible to the naked eye, about 0.3 millimeters long (just to put that in perspective ...

Most people on Earth are habitats for mites that spend the majority of their brief lives burrowed, head-first, in our hair follicles, primarily of the face. In fact, humans are the only habitat ...

Meet the face mites. They're smaller than a grain of sand, are a kind of arachnid, like spiders, and they feast on the oil and cells in your skin. Particularly on your oily nose, cheeks ...

Meet the microscopic arachnids that live on your face, and find out why Demodex mites are part of the human microbiome.

This story appears in the February 2015 issue of National Geographic magazine. Currently two species of face mites are known; at least one of them appear to be present on all adult humans.

Meet Demodex, the face mite, a microscopic arachnid that lives on human skin. The pore is its humble abode and the waxy sebum we secrete is its meal of choice. It's hard to know for sure ...