With Halloween just past us, I find myself wondering why spiders are thought to be so scary. What is it about spiders that makes people dislike them so much when, in fact, almost all of them are quite harmless?
Is it because people think they are poisonous and that they will bite? Of the estimated 50,000 species of known spiders in the world, only a few are dangerous and most of the rest do not have strong enough fangs to bite humans.
Is it because they can move fast? Most spiders move fast to get away from predators (such as humans) and prefer to stay perfectly still and unobtrusive so they can ambush their supper.
Some folks think spiders are too hairy, but most spiders are not very hairy. Even super hairy tarantulas are misunderstood as it is only the females that present a threat. Males — such as “Hairy Armpit” who belonged to a student and ran freely around one of the university science labs when I was in grad school — make wonderful pets.
Some people dislike their “long” legs and think spiders are unpredictable because they can move too suddenly in any direction.
What is known, is that spider fear is not instinctive. Some people’s strong dislike of spiders is more likely a result of being pre-programmed in early childhood by a scary experience or from growing up with at least one family member or friend that was arachnophobic.
Fear of spiders can also be a cultural phenomenon. If you have some European ancestry, you are more likely to be afraid of spiders. It is thought that those Europeans exposed to the plagues in the Middle Ages developed a protective fear of spiders as they thought the spiders were carriers of the black plague or of tarantism — an illness that made people dance uncontrollably. They were not the carriers.
There is much less fear of spiders in people from India, Africa, the Caribbean or with Aboriginal Australian ancestry. In these places spiders are often a symbol of good luck or even considered a culinary delicacy.
Spiders play a key role in regulating the density of invertebrate pests that eat plants (such as aphids) or prey on other creatures (i.e., mosquitoes carrying pathogens) and spiders do much more good than harm. Humans are one of the chief threats to spiders, a few species of which are in severe decline already.
Please do not kill spiders, catch them and put them outside or let them be.
