If you’ve spent most of your life irrationally afraid of bugs crawling into your ears while you sleep, never fear, because according to recent research, bugs so dislike earwax that the gunky stuff that clogs up your ears acts as a kind of natural insect repellent.According to a study published in Soft Matter and detailed in The Conversation by researchers from Georgia Tech and the University of Wollongong, that gross, waxy substance officially known as cerumen is designed to clean, protect, and lubricate your ears also provides an all-natural bio-defense system that insects hate. Your Earwax Could Inspire the Next Generation of Bug Repellents. Seriously.To test how bugs handle your ear canal’s gunk, the team gathered earwax from humans, sheep, pigs, and rabbits, then smeared it all over the inside of a large beaker. Then they brought in some fire ants to see what they thought of it all.Ants usually have no problem scaling glass because they can deploy wet suction pads on their feet that keep them suspended. Smooth earwax is packed with microscopic, bottle-shaped pores made of dead skin cells and lipids that instantly suck the moisture right off the ants’ feet. The ants instantly lose all traction and slide off like a cartoon character on a banana peel.If an ant tries to plow through a wax-coated tunnel anyway, the material’s “shear-thinning” properties kick in. The earwax clings to the insect’s body, forcing the bug to stop and groom itself furiously for minutes on end, but we forget it that it’s initial mission was to power through the earwax.The researchers admit that harvesting earwax to potentially bottle as a commercial bug spray is totally out of the question, but the underlying principles at play could one day lead to an earwax-inspired version of pest control.The post Scientists Discovered a Surprising Natural Insect Repellent, and It’s Pretty Disgusting appeared first on VICE.