Earwigs Crawl Into Your Ear and Burrow Into Your Brain

Earwigs do not target ears or brains, and they certainly do not lay eggs in your head. There is no tunnel from your ear canal to your brain anyway; the eardrum is a dead end. Earwigs are ordinary garden insects that eat plants, decaying matter, and other small bugs, and they want nothing to do with you. Like any small insect, one could conceivably wander into an ear by accident while you sleep on the ground, which is rare, harmless, and easily dealt with, the same as any bug ending up somewhere awkward. The scary name is centuries old and its origin is debated; one idea is that the hind wings, when unfolded, are shaped a bit like a human ear, nothing to do with crawling into them. So the earwig is libelled by its own name. It is a harmless gardener with a terrible PR problem and zero interest in your skull.