Over the past few months I’ve heard several acquaintances declare that "the average person eats 7 (or 10)spiders per years in their sleep. Does anyone know if this is true?
While the average house no doubt contains multitudes of spiders, how many of these critters will actually crawl on a particular person while they are sleeping? Aren’t most spiders partial to quiet corners and not enormous snoring animals?
Perhaps a few spiders do inadvertently crawl upon sleeprs over the course of a year, but what are the odds that these spiders would crawl near the mouth; that the mouth would be open, that they would WANT to enter the mouth, and that the sleeper would swallow the spider as opposed to waking up, and/or spitting it out. Since no one I’ve ever talked to, including thank Providence myself, has reported waking up with live, dead, drowned, or crushed spiders in their mouths, I consider the odds of the “average” person ingesting several spiders per year, while sleeping, to be incredible.
This is a huge Urban Legend, and I was sure that Cecil had done a column on it, but I can’t find it. Anybody else?
If you don’t want yours, can I have 'em?
Who nows how many flies they’v eaten! Renfield was right!
I don’t know why this one keeps coming up. Its well discussed in the archives if you search.
It’s thought to be bed mites, which are supposedly a form of spider.
This was covered before:
which included my experiment to determine the number of spiders we eat while asleep. Would you believe I didn’t get a single volunteer? Nobody offered me a research grant either.
We’ve got this question so many times, that we finally gave up… It will appear as a Mailbag Answer in a few weeks’ time, with Straight Dope Staff Doug (the bug guy) giving the official and real answer according to insectology. Preview: No, it ain’t so.
As I suspected, no one of discerning intelligence can give this rumor credence. I have attempted to research this on a few Urban Legends sites; I also searched Straight Dope archives under “eating spiders” and there were no matches. It was only after checking first in the aforementioned sites that I made so bold as to post my inquiry here.
I also look forward to the “official” response, to which I will gleefully refer those who persist in disseminating this disgusting spider nonsense.
I will! I will!
Dex, you have absolutely no idea how thrilled I am to hear that.
Any chance you can do a mailbag item on fixing one’s computer or which is better, Apple or Wintel? 