Rachel hates spiders. This situation was not improved when an East African jumping spider bit her last year. Even though Rachel knows all of the logical reasons why she should like spiders, they really creep her out. And Aaron had a horrible experience with a brown recluse spider bite on the middle of his forehead (which made his brother call him “the unicorn”). The thought that we are routinely swallowing spiders in our sleep is incredibly freaky to both of us. You can imagine that someone may have first told someone else that they were swallowing spiders because they wanted to scare people just like Rachel, and the thought was so creepy that it stuck around. A 1954 book about insect folklore contained this myth, and most versions of this myth that are passed around imply that you are swallowing these spiders while you sleep. In 1993, Lisa Holst wrote a magazine article describing how this swallowing spiders idea was a myth, “a ridiculous belief of the sort that someone would actually believe.” And, in classic myth-spinning form, now people quote her article as a source documenting that people actually do swallow spiders every year (even though that is the exact opposite of what she was saying).
How do we know that the average person is not swallowing eight spiders per year? Can we prove that this does not happen? No. There are no great studies to prove that this does not happen, but there are also no studies to prove that this does happen. We could not find any studies documenting any instances of people accidentally swallowing live spiders. And without any science or evidence, there is no reason to believe that this is actually happening. Furthermore, there are a lot of reasons why it is virtually impossible that people are swallowing so many spiders.
We’ll be the first to admit that we are people doctors, and not experts on spiders. Therefore, we must turn to spider experts, such as the frighteningly dedicated aficionados at www.spiderzrule.com. (This site must be seen to be believed.) Why don’t we routinely swallow spiders in our sleep? First of all, most people roll around in their sleep. This rolling around would probably scare the spiders from wandering anywhere close to your face. Second, you would need to have your mouth open, and not everyone keeps theirs open while they sleep. Third, insect experts tell us that spiders, like other arthropods, instinctively flee from open, breathing mouths. This makes sense—if you are an arthropod, unless you are suicidal, you are programmed to try to avoid things that might eat you. Finally, the spider would have to walk into your mouth and stay there in such a way that your swallowing reflex was triggered. We do not automatically swallow every time something goes into our mouths. The chance that all of these things would happen together—that there would be a wandering, potentially suicidal spider in close vicinity to your mouth and that they would actually wander in to the wet, dark, breathing space and trigger your swallowing reflex—is really incredibly small.
Still, some will claim that a spider could fall into your mouth. What if it was hanging from the ceiling just above your mouth? The odds of this happening are also incredibly small. Your mouth is a relatively small target for a spider to hit randomly. And before you start worrying that eight spiders are going into your stomach every year through your nose, it’s even more unlikely that you would swallow them this way than if they actively chose to crawl into your mouth. Your nostrils are (we hope) even smaller than your mouth, and thus an even smaller target for the spiders to hit. The most likely scenario if a spider actually went into your nose is that you would sneeze it out. The sneeze reflex is very sensitive, and recognizes when even a small piece of dust gets in the nose.
So, it is possible that you have swallowed a spider, perhaps even more than one. But it is incredibly unlikely that you have swallowed eight in the last year. Or that enough people are swallowing spiders that each person would average eight (or any significant number) in a year. It’s a myth all around.
MYTH, HALF-TRUTH, OR OUTRIGHT LIE?
If you get a bee sting, you must squeeze
out the stinger
This one is a half-truth! If you get a bee sting, you need to get the stinger out. The stinger can continue to pump out venom, and that will make your reaction to the bee sting worse. Getting the stinger out as fast as possible is an important part of treating a bee sting. But, how should you get the stinger out? Some people advocate just squeezing, while others say you need to scrape the skin with something flat to remove the stinger. One study using volunteers who allowed themselves to be stung by bees tested the different methods of stinger removal and how bad the reaction was. The study found that bee sting reaction was no worse if you squeezed out the stinger compared to scraping it off. What did make the reaction worse was if you left the stinger in longer. Do the fastest thing you can to get that stinger out!