Male spiders are incapable of getting their own beer?
I also got over my fear of spiders a few years ago. I lived in a house that had an unusually high number of spiders for some reason; there was almost always at least one in my bedroom and often one in my bathroom. I would sit at my computer and a spider would crawl up the adjacent wall next to me. I’d freak out and have to either kill it, go off and do something else or continue to compute in a freaked-out and alarmed state. One day I realized that of all the times I’ve been face to face with a spider, they had never even tried to hurt me. It wasn’t so much personalization or anthropomorphization as it was a sudden realization that there wasn’t actually any danger inherent in being around spiders, generally. From that point, I did my best to remind myself of that when I saw one. I gradually got less and less freaked out, until I had pretty much reached the point you want to.
I later found out that this is a less intense version of a long-accepted treatment for people who can’t get over their phobias by any other means: put the person in a room with a whole bunch of whatever it is they fear, and leave them in there until they sweat it out and realize that they still haven’t been hurt. That’s a last-ditch measure, but my less taxing version worked fine for me as a substitute for therapy.
Can I hijack my own thread? I have heard that you’re never more than 4 feet from a spider your entire life. You just don’t see them. Is this an urban legend?
I’ve never heard that, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Spiders can get awfully small (I’ve seen ant-sized ones), they like the dark, and they seem to be capable of getting into just about anything. It all depends on just how many spiders there are in the world, I guess. One spider within every 16 square feet of the total land surface of the Earth? Let’s do some research, shall we? (No cites, sorry, since I blew right through it and forgot to keep track of them.)
By my calculation, that’s at least 343,139,543,750,000 spiders. There seem to be just over 40,000 known spider species (FTR, all but 350 of them can inject venom, but only 200 of the venom-injectors can pose health problems to humans, and presumably many of those aren’t deadly). Apparently there could be as many as 200,000 species, by a liberal estimate. Wikipedia says they do live everywhere, including the Arctic (apparently they build silk domes underwater and hang out in those). Apparently their web-spinning capacity has been tested in space, although I can’t find the results and honestly can’t be arsed to look too hard. FTR, harvestmen seem not to be spiders, technically, although they are arachnids–and their other nickname, daddy long-legs, also applies to another arachnid I saw a lot growing up in Maryland, which is a real spider.
I can’t seem to find an estimate for the total number of spiders in the world, but it would have to be anywhere from about 1,715,697,719 per species to 8,578,488,594 per species depending on how many species there really are. Plausible? I couldn’t tell ya. We’ll have to wait for a taxonomist for a more authoritative answer.
I’ve heard the one about swallowing an average of 7 spiders during a year. Um…ew?
Even that’s an understatement. In fact, the clothes you’re wearing are filled with spiders right now.
Back when I was living in Sacramento, CA I soon discovered that my backyard was Black Widow Central. They were all over the place. I had two choices: go insane, or read up on them. I chose the latter and learning my chances of getting bitten were pretty slim and even if I did get bitten I probably wouldn’t die or anything helped get me used to them. I had one living under an outside bench in the backyard where I parked my ass everyday and after I discovered her I figured, “well, if she hasn’t bitten my ass by now she’s probably not going to.” I let her live. Believe me, that was big for me. I DON’T LIKE SPIDERS.
I have other stories. Maybe I’ll bore you later.
Oh, and mice, rats, snakes? Nah, no biggie.
OK… WHERE IS THE PICTURE.
There is a mention of a picture but no link… isnt that against the TOS? All pets have to have picture links… 
I remember a spider that lived outside my window. Orange body, green legs. Watched her build a web all summer then one day there’s a big egg in it. The egg hatched… and a hundred baby spiders came out… and they ate her.
I have spend hours and horus with taxonomists on these topics as I researched the book, and all that you say is correct.
It is not an urban legend that you are always within six feet of a spider, which is the usual quoted. Many are as tiny as a pinhead. There are about 40,000 species currently classified. Europe’s spiders are probably mostly done. America’s and Australia’s and other warmer climates have a much greater diversity and the estimate of our major taxonomist in Australia, Dr Mark Harvey, is that we are probably about 15% done and America isn’t much better. I photographed Mark in the basement of the Museum of Western Australia in a long corridor of vials - thousands of them - all containing dead spiders waiting to be described and classified.
There are no estimates that I came across for the total spider population of the world, but there have been two estimates, widely quoted (I can give cites) which give the probable population in a single acre of grassy field in summer at about 2 million spiders. Those studies were in England and America.
We are fairly aware of web builders, and less so, of the burrowers. But most spiders are free range hunters. Once you get used to seeing them, you will note that as soon as they are threatened, say by a massive human predator watching them, they stop. Even if you have been watching a ground spider, the moment it stops you will struggle to see it.
As for my controvertial statement that “One major reason for roaming is when males are trying to find females for the usual reason males like to find females.” When males are trying to find females - specifically going out for the single goal of finging a female which is what roaming male spiders are doing - then the purpose is usually for the games and premliminaries which lead to a significant proportion of the population having offspring. Species which don’t do that soon die out. If males didn’t have a sexual goal in their primary breeding years, then we wouldn’t be here. Long may it last!
The unique aspects of spider sexual behaviour (that was a great chapter to write) became apparent when I talked to evolutionary biologist, Professor Mark Elgar. I struggled with the debate in this area - specifically about what is the evolutionary advantage to a male spider to seek mating in which he will be killed, as is the case with the sexually cannibalistic spiders. The red-back somersaults into the female’s jaws to ensure she kills him. Why would this behaviour have evolved?
The reality is that in the animal world, the usual reason for a male to go out to specifically seek out females is to breed, even if they are not conscious of that long term outcome. Every animal species has its rituals and premliminaries to choose the right mate, but the end product is that the species will continue to breed. Spiders are less successful statistically than humans. Only a tiny proportion of those wandering males will actually become fathers. Some will die in the jaws of a female, often without having succesfully mated. Most will die on during the roaming phase, having never found a female in order to breed. Think of their size and the chance of coming across a scent line or web of a receptive female. Chances aren’t good! Please have sympathy for the next male spider you see in your house. Most don’t feed once they have reached sexual maturity and started their roam. That little spider you smudge is most likely on a death march.
The incredible stuff with spiders, unlike any other creature in the wild, is that you can watch all the exciting phases on the back porch. There is a very common spider all over the world, known as the common house spider (Achaearanea tepidariorum), see Wikipedia which leaves messy cobwebs which most people think are empty. This little spider will be curled up during the day, hard to see until you know what to look for. She is amazing to watch when they come out at night. They tackle prey massively bigger than themselves, and win. You will see the tiny males living with the females in their webs for weeks. I have watched for hours as two males fought for the attentions of a female. Every time the larger male got the female into the trancelike state they get into to mate, the little male would come in and interrupt! Then the spider sits on her egg sac - all in full view. No hiding away. Hundreds of young hatch and stay with her for a week or two, hunting together until they balloon off. Every night something interesting is happpening in my Achaearanea webs. Just don’t clean them off and you can have the same fun!
Oh dear, the missionary zeal has taken hold again.
Warning to arachnophobes - this link will come up with Chini (she lived in the zucchini patch) up close and personal. She has one of her young next to her. Further down is my beloved Theresa.
Let me tell you about my mother.
I have to say that people posting pictures of their spiders is far more interesting than pictures of their cats.
Yay! At least we can look forward to about half of those babies going off and building their own web, laying their own big eggs, and be eaten by their brood! Yipee!!
We need an LOLSpiderz board.
Man, I would be SO much more tolerant of spiders if I hadn’t been bitten twice in a single decade by those with necrotic venom, so that I still bear notable tissue damage (bitten once in each breast, huzzah) and spent well over a month each time in incredible pain and itchiness.
I mean the regular spider bites I’ve gotten that made my toes swell up and itch for days, sure, whatever. But after the two separate species of necros got to me in two different states, well, that’s it. No more tolerance for the visible-size ones.
Tarantulas are fine buggers, though.
Shows what you know. I’m naked, and beating off to your posts. 
Actually, did you know that there are three spiders in your urethra at any given time?
So this is why I’m repulsed by having to clean up my ejaculate? Huh. I never made the connection. Thanks, Mr. Obvious, you’re a lifesaver.
/Bob and Tom