This question comes from a weird image from a recent dream – is there any organism that specifically eats just human dandruff?
Dandruff is just dead skin. The dust mites that live in your bed sheets (including your pillow) eat your shed skin. That is about as close to specific as you are probably going to get.
House dust mites happily munch on any dropped skin flakes in the vicinity and could at least in theory live happily on your dandruff, but human dandruff is not the only thing they can eat.
…but 8 out of 10 mites agree that it’s head and shoulders above any other food.
Not exactly dandruff in the usual sense, but how about mites that live in your eyebrows?
Also lice.
As said, dust mites. Some percentage of household dust is dead skin, although not the majority of it as often said. But it’s probably tastier for the mites than the dirt and artificial materials that make up a lot of it.
Gee, thanks a lot for that link! Now, I feel like scrubbing my entire body with steel wool.
Thanks for the replies!
Small correction, but according to the article, they live in your eyelashes.
In other words, closer to your eyes.
My work here is done.
Huh. I googled ‘eyelashes’ because that’s what I remembered, and it says eyelashes in the article as well as the headline, but I somehow got the impression it was talking about eyebrows* and figured it was a scare headline. So I corrected my non-mistake.
*Like Jasmine I imagine, I didn’t wanna read the article too closely.
Doctor fish, if you want something that’s prettier?
That might not be a good idea. Your body is a habitat for more things than the cells that make up the actual human part.