Miscellaneous Interesting Facts

A lot of the fear surrounding spiders is based on myths, not facts, according to the experts who study these eight-legged creatures.

Myth No. 1: Didn’t see what bit you? It was probably a spider 

“Unquestionably, the most pernicious of all spider myths is the idea that if you didn’t see what bit you, it was a spider,” said Rod Crawford, curator of arachnids at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle.

Spiders are blamed for all kinds of bites, bumps, rashes and growths that they likely had nothing to do with, according to Crawford. The myth that spiders tend to bite people when they least expect it — like when they’re lying in bed — has been making the rounds for well over a hundred years, but it’s not clear how it got started, he said.

Facts: While it is certainly possible for spiders to bite people in bed, Crawford said this doesn’t happen often. Unlike mosquitos or ticks, spiders don’t feed on human blood, so they have no reason to venture near a slumbering human on purpose. And even if you were to roll on top of a spider in your sleep,  it would be tough for the critter to bite you since its fangsare located underneath its body, Crawford said.

The notion that spider bites are extremely common is also a potentially dangerous myth. Several conditions that are wrongly labeled as spider bites— particularly skin infections and skin cancer — are actually much more serious than spider bites and require immediate medical attention, Crawford said.

Myth No. 2: Spiders are aggressive

As Crawford said, spiders don’t seek out human beings just to bite them for fun. But, spiders also don’t always bite humans when they have the opportunity to do so.

“The thing that annoys me most about public perception of spiders is that [people think] they are all aggressive,” said Lizzy Lowe, a doctoral candidate at the University of Sydney’s School of Biological Sciences. “I collect a lot of spiders, and I do this all by hand. Very few will try to attack you or are going to do you any harm if they do accidentally bite you.”

Fact: Bites can occur when spiders feel threatened or are surprised, but for the most part, spiders seem pretty oblivious to humans, according to Lowe. Crawford said he has handled tens of thousands of spiders over the course of his 30-year career and has been bitten only twice — both of which caused what he calls “trivial” effects.

And when it comes to being aggressive, some spiders are simply misunderstood. Jumping spiders often terrify people with their ability to leap great distances, Lowe told Live Science in an email. But, these small spiders are not at all aggressive toward humans, and their venom is not a threat to people, she said.

Myth No. 3: If you see a spider in your house, you should put it back outside

You may think you’re being kind by putting a spider you find in the bathroom sink outside on the lawn, but this isn’t necessarily the case.

Fact: Putting a house spider outside is a little like “freeing” a lion that has spent its whole life inside a zoo: the odds that it’ll survive a return to its “native habitat” aren’t very good.

This is because most of the spiders found in homes — about 95 percent — have adapted to life indoors, according to Crawford. While spiders may wander into your home from outside every once in a while, this isn’t the norm. Spiders found indoors likely belong to a small number of species, dubbed house spiders, that have been living with humans since at least the days of the Roman Empire, Crawford said.

In Seattle, for example, there are approximately 137 species of spiders that live outdoors and there are approximately 25 known species of house spiders. Only eight of those species, however, can survive both inside a house and outside in the garden, Crawford said.

So what should you do when you see a spider in your house? Crawford suggests leaving the critter alone, but if that’s not your style, he recommends trying to keep spiders out of certain areas of your home where you’d rather not run into them, such as the bedroom. Seal any gaps in floorboards, cracks in walls or other holes or crevices through which the spiders may access these spaces, Crawford said

Source: http://www.livescience.com/48479-spider-myths-busted.html