A six-year-old girl has had a cockroach removed from her ear canal after noticing a strange tingling sensation during an afternoon nap.

The incident took place in the city of Shenzhen in the south-eastern Chinese province of Guangdong on 17th August.

According to local media, the young girl noticed a tingling in her ear after taking a nap and her mother checked to see what the problem could be.

The stunned mum then saw a live cockroach in one of her daughter’s ear canals and decided to seek medical attention.

She took her daughter to a nearby medical centre and an ear doctor observed a two-centimetre-long cockroach burrowing its way towards the girl’s eardrum with an otoscope.

The doctor reportedly poured a medical solution into the girl’s ear to kill the insect before then safely removing it from her ear canal.

The local authorities reminded residents to always go to hospital if a foreign object or live insect enters an ear and do not try to deal with the problem on their own.

Someone trying to remove an insect without medical attention could cause it to burrow deeper inside, possibly damaging the eardrum and causing a series of complications.