Once I heard that a person eats about 6-8 spiders :eek: (during his life)while he sleeps. The spiders seem to be attracted by the heat of the exhaled air (If you sleep with open mouth just like me :D). I was terrified to hear this because I am a sworn Arachnofob (afraid of spiders) and have an UNCONTROLLABLE disgust when I see one( And the bastards know it :mad: ).
PLEASE TELL ME IT IS NOT TRUE, PLEASE
p.s: However, how nutritious is the spider (just in case you know…) Thank you.
http://venomous-spiders.nanders.dk/eatingspiderwhileasleep.htm
If you are an arachnophobe, you probably don’t want to click on the first link.
The answer is that the chances of eating a spider while sleeping are very low. Due to exhaled breath being warmer than the air around it, thus probably making a spider afraid to enter. Then there’s the whole tongue and lips issues, which are both very sensitive and yeah. Chances are apparently awfully low of ever actually eating a spider while asleep.
TNX ! Now I can sleep with my mouth opened and fear no "Midnight snack"
But… "Chances are apparently awfully low" isn’t 100% spider-free, right? And 6-8 a lifetime… here I go again… 
Blood_Feather, I’m also (shall we say) averse to spiders, though I’ve learned to live with the ones with leg spans no bigger than a nickel. It’s when they get bigger than the size of a half-dollar piece that I get creeped out.
Okay, with that out of the way: look, we eat a lot of things we don’t know about. It’s best not to dwell on such matters. Think of everything that lives in the world, the little things likely to get into canned and baked goods, ground meat, bread. Disgusting, yes? But that’s the way of the world. Nothing’s perfect. We survive. Heck, it may even be good for us!
My guess is that 6-8 spiders a lifetime is way too conservative an estimate. Live spiders, maybe. We probably eat hundreds, maybe thousands, of dead ones, in our hamburgers, our chili, in hot dogs, cream tarts, soup and stews; most of them are not whole, I would imagine, from all the processing, so we get a leg here, a leg there, maybe part of a body, occasionally a whole one. I’m talkin’ little spiders, not tarantulas. I never let it bother me, though, and I do my best to keep everything I cook spider free.
Unless you’re actively eating spiders while awake, that little factoid is false.
Well, if you are NOT eating them in your sleep, then that means they are still alive and are able to continue creeping around on your bed and body all night long.
Does that help ?
Hmm… arachnofob… Sounds like a great new invention to keep your spiders all in one place on a key ring!
It’s not “choking on spiders”, it’s “surprise breakfast”!
I was thinking one bigass mofo at the end of a watch chain. Bronzed, gold-plated.
This is one of the “spider myths” debunked on my web site (my motto is, “everything you thought you knew about spiders is wrong.”) I’ve never been presented with any compelling evidence that this has happened even once, ever. A few people have told me that they woke up with a spider in their mouth, but (1) it invariably happened decades ago when they were small children, and (2) they always disposed of the evidence before they were fully awake. No arachnologist has ever been presented with a spider specimen that came out of someone’s mouth. Also, in the history of the world many wakeful persons have watched another person sleep (a patient, child, spouse, lover, or whatever) and there is not one single eyewitness account of a spider entering another person’s mouth (or being narrowly prevented from doing so). Not one!
I have one little problem with Doug’s staff report on this issue. He implies that spiderlings (baby spiders) sometimes disperse by ballooning - indoors. I’ve studied both house spiders and ballooning for decades, with several refereed publications on these topics, and have never encountered a single case of indoor mass ballooning. It requires weather conditions that only apply outdoors. Doug does the best he can, but he’s an entomologist, not an arachnologist.
So realistically, the only way you’re going to swallow spiders is when you’re awake. Some cultures (e.g. Laotians, Papuans) make spiders a semi-regular part of their diet. I’ve eaten a few because I know David Gordon the “bug chef.” They’re much better cooked. I also eat my share of canned food, which notoriously contains insect and spider parts. No harm has come to me from this…
PS. Arachnophobia is treatable. Success rates are pretty high these days with new treatment technologies. If your phobia is really debilitating it might be worthwhile seeking therapy for it.
Gee, thanks! I’ll stop sleeping now, forever. (shudder) 
Big deal! I’m an avid cyclist and I probably swallow dozens of flies and other flying insects every summer. There’s these small swarms of insects over here that are so small you only notice them when the are an inch away from your face. I probably get hundreds of those in my mouth every summer.