Spider found living in singer Katie Melua's ear

British singer-songwriter Katie Melua had a spider living in her ear.

Arachnophobes, look away now.

Because Katie Melua's medical complaint had a truly terrifying cause.

The singer, 30, had gone to her doctors to complain about a repetitive scratching noise she could hear in her ear that had failed to quieten after a week.

The musician, to her horror, discovered that it wasn't in fact an early sign of tinnitus, but that the noise had actually been caused by a spider living in her ear for seven days.

Melua, who once released the track "Spider's Web", said she believes the spider burrowed its way inside her ear after hiding in a pair of headphones.

"Basically I used these old in-ear monitors to block out sound on a flight, a little spider must have been in them and crawled inside my ear and stayed there for the week," she captured one horrifying image of the arachnid on Instagram.

"Though the thing looked terrifying up-close on the doctor's camera, once he took him out (using a micro-hoover) it was pretty small, and now it's in this little test tube, alive and seemingly fine.

"It was no hassle at all, apart from the occasional shuffling noises."

Melua's spokesperson has since added:

"The ear specialist said he'd never in his career taken out a live bug before. Plenty of dead ones. When it was out it was pretty tiny.

"Katie kept it in the test tube and released it in her garden when she got home. Apart from shuffling and random noises in her ear, the spider was no bother for the entire week it lived there. She was relieved it was what it was as she was worried she was losing her hearing."

- Independent