If you find pictures like this pretty hard to look at, you aren’t the only one.
Arachnophobia effects millions of people all over the world.
But even more people have a general dislike of spiders.
They probably prefer not to encounter one and quite often try to kill
or get rid of the ones they find in their homes.
But here's the thing:
a recent study suggests this general fear at the sight of a
spider is way over the top.
Researchers analyzed thousands of news stories about spiders.
And are now saying our eight-legged friends are the subjects of a serious misinformation campaign.
So could it be that we are only so scared of spiders
because we get too many horror stories about them?
It's quiz time!
What do you think?
How many tons of prey does the global spider population consume in one year?
20 million tons a year.
200 million.
800 million.
2.5 tons.
Here's a hint:
Whales kill an estimated 280 to 500 million tons of prey each year.
And humans eat around 400 million tons of meat and fish annually.
The correct answer is:
all together spiders consume between 400 and 800 million tons of prey a year.
That fact inspired The Washington Post to this comparison.
The total biomass of all adult humans on earth is around 287 million tons.
Plus another 70 million for children.
That's almost 360 million tons.
So The Washington Post concluded.
“In other words, spiders could eat all of us and still be hungry.”
Are spiders starting to sound scary?
Hey, maybe this is an example of anti-spider-news in action.
The international study collected and analyzed more than 5300 news stories about spiders
from 81 different countries over a period of ten years.
Of all the articles analyzed, it turned out that 47% contained factual errors
and 43% were sensationalistic.
The most dramatic continent of all was Europe.
Not only did it published by far
the highest number of articles about spiders and spider bites,
it also outranked the rest of the world in terms of sensationalist language and lack of expert consultation.
In the UK, for example, there are very often erroneous reports of dangerous species like funnel webs and black widows,
being found in people's garden sheds or bunches of bananas.
False widow spiders have even caused entire schools to be closed.
The media also regularly reports on deadly spider related events
in other countries, like Brazil or India.
These countries are home to venomous spiders, like the Brazil Wandering Spider,
but no one's ever likely to encounter in Europe.
Stocking fear in this way can have outcomes far beyond school closures.
Like the man in the USA who set his home on fire when he used a blowtorch to try to kill spiders.
“This probably was a bad idea to do so.”
So it seems like some people are really scared of this eight-legged creatures.
But why?
Everyone is different.
But scientists have suggested
a few possible reasons for our general fear of spiders.
The first is legitimate concern, of course.
Particularly in countries with a higher number of venomous spiders.
It's probably clever to be at least slightly scared of something
that could kill you, even if the chances are pretty low.
But that doesn't explain the discrepancy, which the sensationalism study
found between Australia and the UK.
As we all know, Australia is home to dangerous spiders.
But the study found that news articles about them are rarely sensational.
In the UK, as we've seen, it's quite the opposite.
No venomous spiders but hundreds of articles about them.
This doesn't quite add up.
There is a human tendency to fear the unknown.
Which would go some way to explaining that difference.
But according to other experts, widespread fear of spiders
could be a kind of inbuilt mechanism - an evolutionary trait.
Research by neuroscientists suggest that babies are more likely to react anxiously to pictures of spiders
or snakes than they are to images of “nice” things, like fish or flowers,
despite not having experience of them in the real world.
So perhaps our dislike of spiders is innate, just hardwired into many people's brains.
And popular culture and mythology have helped to cement it there.
In books, films and paintings across the world
Spiders have long been associated with plague, death and trickery.
And now it seems we have the mass media spreading stories online about “deadly bites” and “spider infestations”.
No wonder we all scared.
Looking at pictures you can kind of see why:
With eight legs, sometimes eight eyes and hunting methods that range from spinning sticky nets to catch their prey,
to digging holes and waiting under a trap door made of silk.
Spiders can seem pretty creepy,
but they're also very cool.
Their preferred diet is usually insects, including many that feed on the crops that we eat,
and that makes them natural pest killers.
Without spiders, it's thought that our food supply could be at risk.
Some arachnids prefer their fellow species,
and a few others hunt small animals like birds or lizards
and a raft spider even eats fish.
Well, spiders can’t actually” eat”.
Instead, they have hollow fangs that inject their prey with venom.
This liquidizes its insides, so the spider can suck them out.
There are more than 45,000 known species all over the planet.
And the only continent where you won't find spiders is Antarctica.
Scientists estimate a mean density of 131 individuals per square meter,
in various habitats to up to 1000 in very favorable conditions.
That's a lot of spiders! And every species has its own special skillset.
The ballooning spider, for example,
uses a silk to kind of fly, sometimes traveling up to 30 kilometers a day.
Little jumping spiders can detect more colors than we can.
Thanks to four pairs of eyes with muscles attached to their retinas.
And while not all spiders spin webs, those that do produce silk really means business.
The tiny strands formed of nano fibers can be five times stronger than steel.
But among all these features, is there any that should make us afraid? No.
Of all those thousands of species, only about 0.5% actually have a venomous bite,
that poses a danger to humans.
And of them, a good number lives in habitats, where they’re rarely encountered by people.
Australia is famous for its venomous spiders, like redbacks and funnel webs,
but there have been no deaths in the country from a confirmed spider bite since 1979.
And in the US, which is home to black widow and brown recluse spiders, there are only around 6 deaths a year from spider bites.
Your chances of dying from a spider bite in the first place are around 1 in 50 million.
If that surprised you, you might be a victim of what the new study considers
to be the sensationalism and spread of misinformation around spiders.
Spiders have simply no interest in humans.
We're so large that we're just part of their landscape
and we constantly create vibrations even when we are sleeping.
And that scares spiders away.
Oh, and by the way, the urban legend about
us eating eight spiders a year in our sleep?
Sensationalism again.
Ironically, this one seems to have originated back in 1993,
in an article, about how people tend to believe everything they read online.
It's a made up fact that stuck in the collective consciousness.
Perhaps that's worth bearing in mind next time you catch a sight of a spider.
After centuries of bad press, it's time to put a fresh spin on things
for these underrated superheroes of the natural world.
Check out more videos of our “Wild to know”- series.
You can find them here or in the playlist link below.