By now, you might think that people have run out of ways to modify their bodies. Once people have started splitting their tongues or tattooing their eyeballs, it’s tempting to think that there’s nothing new under that particular sun.
Also, tattooing your eyeballs puts you at serious risk of blindness or losing your eyes, so that’s not recommended.
In any case, just when we start to get comfortable with the notion that everything has been done, somebody comes along with a strange new idea. And one body modification shop has certainly taken a bold, if possibly ill-advised step in that direction.
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At this point, getting a piercing in your ear cartilage, also known as a “conch,” is nothing new.
Although Snopes has not found conclusive evidence that this works, some people might get what is called a daith piercing in their cartilage to help manage their migraines.
Other such piercings, like the gauge you see here, are done for stylistic reasons.
But last week, the Calm Body Modification studio in Stockholm, Sweden, took this idea to its absolute extreme.
The studio’s owner, Chai Maibert, unveiled the bizarre results of a procedure his customer had come all the way from Australia to receive.
And that procedure involved removing the conch entirely.
It’s unclear why exactly this man wanted to undergo a “conch removal,” but Maibert said he was humbled that he had traveled so far to get it done.
One of the only other people who’s been known to offer this is an Australian body modification artist who goes by Luna Cobra.
According to The Washington Post , he also claims to have invented eyeball tattooing on top of conch removal.
But right now, it seems that Maibert is the name we’ll think of when we think of conch removal.
And considering that he’s also known to offer tongue splits like this, he seems to attract the particularly daring members of the body modification community.
Although a lot of the more extreme body mods carry some risk, one would think this conch removal can’t be good for someone’s hearing.
Maibert claims that this isn’t entirely true, saying that conch removal will only impair the ability to hear in certain ways.
He says that conch removal will only impair the ability to hear where sound is coming from for a week or two and will actually improve the ability to hear from behind.
As he put it, “Our ears doesn’t “catch” sound as it did eons of years ago when our ears were bigger hence why we have to create a bigger “ear” by cupping our hand around our ear to hear better.”
However, Maibert’s statements don’t entirely jibe with hearing experts.
As Maryam Ghaderi, who is the head of audiology at a Toronto hearing center, told CTV News, the conch is partially responsible for collecting sound.
Although Ghaderi seems to agree that the ability to localize would be affected, she doesn’t think this effect would be as temporary as Maibert is suggesting.
This means conch removal could potentially lead to more serious hearing impairment, and even have long-term consequences.
However, she also said that it’s difficult to boil that effect down to a percentage of hearing loss.
This is likely due to the fact that the number of people who have opted to get their conches removed are few and far between.
After all, it’s hard to study the effects of something that rarely happens.
But as the trend grows, doctors and audiologists will be able to assess the impact of these body modification surgeries to a degree that may allow for certainty.
Still, those who happened upon the conch removal photo on Maibert’s Facebook page had their own ideas as to how appealing it is.
Maibert has said he’ll block rude commenters, but most of the comments on his conch removal photo seem baffled at the idea.
One user in particular said, “Ah, I see you’ve ordered the attention seeking package, how may I guide your unemployment experience today?”
Although comments like this one may well be a daily attack on Maibert, all that matters is that HE approves of his modifications.
