12 spider myths you absolutely shouldn't believe in

Myth 1. Spiders crawl into your mouth and ears at night

A replicated statement is circulating on the Internet: on average, each person in a dream swallows eight spiders a year. And this is confirmed by statistics. You sleep peacefully, with your mouth open, and the shameless creature takes it and crawls into it.

It is not very clear, however, why it does this, because spiders cannot live in the human intestine and eat half-digested food, like worms.

And in fact, this is nothing more than a bike. Bill Shire, professor of biology at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia and a member of the American Arachnological Society, explainsDo People Swallow Eight Spiders Per Year? / Snopesthat spiders try not to climb on sleeping people, because they are simply afraid of them. For them, a person is something like a huge walking rock, from which it is worth staying away.

Spiders do not hunt sleeping people and do not drink their blood, there is nothing interesting for them in your bed. But the arachnid bugs are eager to get into the bed. But even they will not crawl into your mouth.

This myth appeared thanks toDo People Swallow Eight Spiders Per Year? / Snopes journalist Lisa Holst in 1993. She wrote an article for PC Professional about how easy it is for people to believe all kinds of nonsense on the Internet.

Poking fun at human gullibility, Holst offered her list of invented "facts", among which were statistics about eight spiders. It's funny, but readers, having seen the list, did not buy out Lisa's irony and spread the terrible story all over the Internet.

Myth 2. Wherever you are, there is a spider a meter away

Another popular Internet horror story that terrifies arachnophobes. Allegedly, statistics know for sure that spiders are everywhere in the world. And one meter away from you - well, or a foot, three feet or six feet - like a shaggy eight-legged killing machine sits and ominously rubs it with chelicera. And then how it will jump!

This myth apparently originatedMyth: You are never more than three feet from a spider / The Burke Museum in 1995 because of the words of arachnologist Norman Platnik, who wrote in one article: “Wherever you are sat reading these lines, at least one spider will probably be no further than a few yards. "

There are, of course, many spiders in the world - now science knowsTypes of Spiders & Spider Facts / Live Science 40,000 species of these arthropods. However, we discovered only about 10%, and they inhabit all continents except Antarctica. But it is not at all necessary that at least one is now near you.

Of course, if you are sitting on a lawn, there are probably spiders in the grass. But naturally, they won't be there in winter. Likewise, in an office in a high-rise building, spiders will be much more rare guests than in a country house.

Nobody everMyth: You are never more than three feet from a spider / The Burke Museum didn’t calculate how far the average spider was from the average person. And Norman Platnik just took the number from the ceiling to screw in a spectacular phrase.

Myth 3. Spiders make scary sounds all the time

Video from the channel Live Science / YouTube

In horror movies, eight-legged monsters cannot step without ominous chirping, chirping and crackling. The potential victim hears eerie sounds over his shoulder, turns around... and is bitten, swaddled and carried away into the darkness.

In especially advanced cases, arthropods also talk. But to understand their muttering, you have to wear a special ring or be a friend of Hagrid, if you know what I mean.

But in fact, spiders that frighten victims with sounds are stupid, because they do not have vocal cords. These creatures are simply unable to roar, hiss and screech and attack in silence.

There are, however, some exceptions to this rule. For example, wolf spiders can sit on easily vibrating surfaces (in nature, this is usually a litter of dry leaves) and quickly rub their jaws against each other, making a disgusting squeak. Tarantula spiders behave in about the same way.

Only very few arthropods do this, and even then, to scare awayBRIEF: Spiders "Sing" to Avoid Becoming Supper / Inside Science or to deceive enemies rather than alert prey to an attack. Wolf spiders can also be lured by their purringHow spiders create the sounds of love / BBC News females. They pick up the vibrations with their sensilla (that is, with their knees) and go to the call.

In general, if we consider the behavior of movie spiders, armed with this knowledge, we can assume that they do not want to eat their victims at all.

Myth 4. Spiders can grow to gigantic proportions

A fragment of the film "Kong: Skull Island"

In the movies, we are shown just huge spiders - as tall as a horse, as big as a truck, and sometimes as big as a house. Remember the movie "Kong: Skull Island" - the local haymakers generally towered over the jungle.

In reality, such monsters cannot appear. The fact is that spiders have a rather primitive structure compared to self-respecting vertebrates. There are two main factors that are holding back their growth.

The first is the absence of bones. The shape of the body in arthropods is supported by a chitinous exoskeleton, and this is a very fragile thing.

The second is an ineffective structure of internal organsE. E. Ruppert, R. S. Fox, R. D. Barnes. Invertebrate Zoology from these creatures. There are no normal lungs, instead of them there are pulmonary sacs. And some of them didn't even have bags - only the trachea. So breathing is passive and there is not enough oxygen for a really large body.

In addition, the open circulatory system of spiders is able to support only small-sized organs, because they have a low intensity of blood circulation (more precisely, hemolymph).

A spider the size of an elephant will simply break under its own weight, pass out from low blood pressure and die from hypoxia.

Yes, in ancient times, arthropods, including spiders and scorpions, were larger. Scientists linkOxygen may have been key to evolution of giant insects and land-dwelling animals / University of Michigan this is due to the fact that in the same Carboniferous period there was much more oxygen in the atmosphere - 35% against the current 21%. Under these conditions, the trachea of ​​spiders could better supply life-giving O2 to a large carcass, not like now.

However, large, but primitive arthropods could not compete with reptiles and mammals, which run faster, think better, and bite much harder. So the times of the shellfish and arthropleurus passed, and arthropods have taken their niche of secretive, cautious small hunters.

Myth 5. Spiders attack in a crowd

If movie spiders are not huge, as is usually the case, but small, then they will most likely attack in a crowd. Just a wiggling carpet of arthropods, crawling over the heroes and devouring them alive... Naturally, this army should crawl out of the unfortunate, still living, who has become an incubator for them.

In reality, spiders are loners who cannot stand each other. CannibalismM. Modanu. Sibling cannibalism in a web-building spider: Effects of density and shared environment / Behavioral Processes these guys are well developed, and they usually do not gather in packs, because they risk not resisting and it is commonplace to eat each other.

Actually, thanks to this particular feature of them, the expression “like spiders in a bank” appeared, which is used to characterize problem groups.

To gobble up a brother or sister is a sweet thing for them. Broods of spiders easily eat their own mother when they grow up, and then each other - the strongest survives.

Maximum friendlinessR. F. Foelix. Biology of spidersthat eight-legged creatures are capable of - just tolerate each other. Therefore, when the films show how spiders attack in a crowd, it looks ridiculous. Apparently, filmmakers confuse arthropods with ants.

Myth 6. Female spiders always eat males.

In general, due to their dislike for representatives of their species, furry misanthropes experience some problems with sex.

Everyone has heard that black widows devour their males after intercourse. As a matter of fact, this species got its name thanks to this custom. But in reality, the situation is somewhat more complicated.

Not only black widows, but all other spiders practice cannibalism with an enviable enthusiasm. The spider attacks the spider if it is hungry, and it is not necessary to arrange mating games in order to attack each other. And if the female does not hunt, she can ignore the male.R. F. Foelix. Biology of spiders.

There's a possibilityMyth: When black widow spiders mate, the female always kills and eats the male / Burke Museumthat the myth of black widow females appeared because the reproduction of this species was observed mainly in the laboratory, and not in the wild, where such an incident is rather an exception to the rule. And in the bank of a male, there is nowhere to run.

Moreover, sometimes males eatM. J. Roberts. Spiders of Britain & Northern Europe females - if they can cope with them. Hungry after romantic courtship - well, it doesn't happen to anyone. Water spiders, for example, kill and eat small spiders and take care of only large ones - the fittest survives, culling of outsider individuals, everything.

Silver women do mate with a friend, only having previously securely wrapped her in a web. A well-fixed girl does not need foreplay.

Pisaurs are amazing (pisaura mirabilis) feed their females before the date so that they are not tempted to attack. Particularly advancedP. Stålhandske. Nuptial gift in the spider Pisaura mirabilis maintained by sexual selection / Behavioral Ecology gentlemen cocoon something inedible and, while the lady unfolds the present, they manage to do the job and leave without saying goodbye.

And mimetids, or pirate spiders, approach females of other species and imitateN. I. Platnick, M. U. Shabad. A review of the pirate spiders the behavior of their males, ready to mate. The trusting girl responds to courtship, the predator silently pounces on her and eats her. There is nothing to relax.

Myth 7. Spiders have stings on their belly.

The giant spider Shelob in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was equipped with just that. She stung Frodo in the neck with it, causing him to temporarily fall into a coma.

The writer was bitten by a tarantula as a child, and as a result he developed arachnophobia. Apparently, therefore, he collected the most disgusting features in Shelob - a sting, a "stalked neck", hanging in clusters of eyes.

But the author, apparently, confused a spider with a wasp: these arthropods do not have stings at the end of the body. They bite exclusively with chelicera, that is, with their mouth. On their tail, however, they haveM. Pechmann. Patterning mechanisms and morphological diversity of spider appendages and their importance for spider evolution / Arthropod Structure & Development spider warts. And in some species, they are quite large and may look like an extra pair of legs. But they don’t secrete poison - only cobwebs.

Myth 8. Spiders lay eggs in humans

Fragment of the film "Mist"

The girl lies on the beach and suddenly feels that a spider has bitten her in the face or neck. The next morning she looks in the mirror and is horrified to see a brood of spiders crawling out of the abscess on her cheek. Creepy, right?

This is one of the most popular urban legends.B. Klintberg. Legends and Rumors about Spiders and Snakes / Fabula in the West, which is reflected in cinematography - remember the film "Mist". However, we repeat this story too.

As in the case of the sting on the belly, spiders are again endowed with an ability that in reality very different creatures have.

Arthropods are incapableMyth: Spiders can lay their eggs under human skin in wounds created by their bites / Burke Museum lay eggs under the skin of living things. This is done by gadflies and other two-winged parasitic flies. Their larvae, crawling out of the boils on the host's body, are called myiasis.D. Otranto. The immunology of myiasis: parasite survival and host defense strategies / Trends in Parasitology. You can google it, but this is not a sight for the faint of heart.

The eight-legged monsters who are accused of all sins are in this case the victims themselves. For example, some wasp wasps lay their eggs in them, and the hatched larvae kill and devour spiders.

Myth 9. And in bananas

By the way, there is another popular legend. It says that giant crab spiders lay cocoons with eggs in bananas. Then the fruit is harvested, transported halfway across the world and sold in supermarkets. Someone unlucky buys a banana, begins to peel the peel, and a furry monster will jump out of it! Well, or, as an option, a whole swarm of spiders.

Usually they add to the legend that, unlike humans, monkeys possess a special technique for cleaning these fruits and do not disturb the cocoons.

Therefore, they are not afraid of spiders and only laugh at their hairless relatives.

But this is also a mythMyth: The tip of a banana should not be eaten because there could be spider eggs inside / Burke Museum: Even the toughest spiders cannot bite through the peel of a banana. And they have absolutely no reason to leave offspring inside the fruit: they are obligate predators. Only one spider known to eat vegetarian food Bagheera kiplingibut he also prefers acacia leaves. Although from hunger can do cannibalism.

In theory, of course, an arthropod can attach eggs to the outside of the fetus. But such a thing as the cocoon of a giant crab spider is very hard to miss when picking fruit.

Myth 10. Haymakers are poisonous, but have no fangs

There is another common myth. Allegedly, haymakers, or braids - well, those spiders with disproportionately long paws, which you probably met in the country, are incredibly poisonous. But they cannot harm anyone, because their jaws are too short. Or, in some variations, there is no mouth at all.

This is not true. The haymakers have noM. R. Berenbaum. The Earwig's Tail: A Modern Bestiary of Multi-legged Legends poisonous glands, and their chelicerae are not hollow, but grasping canines. They can hunt small insects, but they do not pose a danger to humans. And if they wanted to, they wouldn't even be able to bite through the skin.

Myth 11. Letting spiders out into the street is a good idea.

Many people, even not loving spiders, have compassion for them. After all, killing a living creature, even if it is so frightening, is not very good. Not wanting to take a sin on their souls, compassionate citizens do not hit the arthropod found on the ceiling with a slipper, but brush it like a newspaper and let it out into the fresh air.

After all, all creatures in the wild are better off, right?

In fact, by throwing a spider out of your home, you are likely to doom it to death: domestic arthropods are not adapted to exist on the street. Arachnologist Rod Crawford ExplainsMyth: “I'm very kind to spiders; when I find one in the house, I put it back outside instead of killing it "/ Burke Museumthat most of the spiders that you can meet in different buildings live there all their lives. About 25 of their species always live in the underground, voids in the walls and abandoned premises. And they never saw the open sky.

So if you want to save the spider's life, it is better to throw it into the entrance, garage or even a barn if you have a private house - there it has a better chance of surviving.

Spiders do not enter your home in the fall to warm upMyth: Spiders come into houses in the fall to get out of the cold / Burke Museum, they do not need artificial shelters. Domestic and garden arthropods are completely different species. And the first, finding themselves in the habitat of severe wild monsters, will most likely be killed. And not by the cold, but by their own brethren. They just aren't used to competition.

Myth 12. Spiders are insects

The last and most common myth. No, spiders are not insects. They referZ. Zhang. Phylum Arthropoda / Zootaxa to the animal kingdom and the type of arthropods, but allocated to their own class of arachnids. Evolutionarily, they separated from insects more than 380 million years ago, so it is wrong to rake them into one pile.