Spider was living in a Chinese woman's ear canal for five days

London: She arrived at China's Changsha Central Hospital with an itchy ear, only to learn the cause was a spider that had crawled into the ear canal. To make things worse, doctors believe the arachnid had been in there for five days, Daily Mail reported on Friday.

Fortunately for the woman, there was some good news - doctors told her the problem would have been far worse if she had tried to scratch it.

At first the medics planned to use tweezers to grab the spider and pull it out - but they were worried that the creature might bite the patient.

Instead, Liu Sheng and his colleagues poured a saline solution into the ear and waited for the spider to leave on its own, which it did, according to the Mail.