Have you heard people say we everybody swallows spiders in their sleep? Well, it isn’t exactly true. First there are many amounts of spiders we “swallow.” Some amounts even get up to an average of twenty spiders a lifetime! This should be a red flag right there. There is no possible way a human could swallow that many spiders. Plus, the circumstances to swallow a spider are too great so it’s not even in for consideration. The main places spiders are found in the human body are in the ears.
This whole “eating spiders in your sleep” thing, started in 1993 in a magazine. This magazine
was spreading fake news because they believed people were quick to believe things that are written on the internet. Which is kind of true today, so maybe that’s why people still believe this myth today. But this myth was all spread my word of mouth like many things that we believe are. The worst that has happened to people in their sleep with spiders is when they get bit by one. And I can speak from experience, they do hurt but it’s not near as bad as believing you could have eaten one.
Spiders are predators and “most predators won’t tackle anything bigger than themselves because they are likely to come off worse,” as said by Dave Clarke the head of invertebrates at the London Zoo in the UK. Clarke also states, “Spiders are highly sensitive to both vibrations and heat so are unlikely to stumble across a human unawares.” “They are just not interested in us at all really.” Even Clarke’s daughter isn’t scared of swallowing them and she’s eight!
Even if there was a spider that got past the vibrations and the extreme heat of our bodies when we sleep, humans would wake up if they felt the sense of a spider crawling on their face, or I hope so. Bill Shear a biology professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia can attest to feeling the spider crawling on your face. After all he had one crawl on his face while he was asleep camping. So, I’m pretty sure everyone else would too.
So, don’t worry about swallowing a spider in your sleep ever, because odds are it’s not going to happen. There are simply too many things playing against it that its basically impossible. Between spiders not liking us and humans being too scary when we sleep, it’s very slim. So, if you ever hear someone talking about how many spiders, they’ve swallowed at night, you can simply walk up to them and say no.
Tayler Gudde
https://www.burkemuseum.org/collections-and-research/biology/arachnology-and-entomology/spider-myths/myth-you-swallow-spiders
https://www.sleep.org/articles/debunking-sleep-myths-people-swallow-spiders-sleep/
https://animals.howstuffworks.com/arachnids/do-we-swallow-spiders-in-sleep.htm
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