Just tonight I was washing my hands and a spider starts crawling up my leg and then bites me. I have had a long history like this. They will jump from the ceiling onto me. They will see me and run across the floor toward me. I though other (smaller) things were more afraid of us then we are of them?
My WAG is that we are so much bigger that we don’t really register as a creature to them, hence they are not programmed to avoid us.
They’ve been watching SyFy with all eight eyes and know they can take us now! Its the end of the world as we know it.
Rumor has it that diluted peppermint oil applied around door frames, window frames and ankles will keep them away.
Most of the time spiders “get away” with taking a free ride on other animals. Most of the time they either get shooed away or jump onto something else. The ones that get swatted and killed don’t get to pass on the message. Just like deer that jump out into traffic.
Is this speculation or do you know that spiders deliberately use other animals to get around?
Some smaller spiders use silk to carry themselves around on the wind.
Answer 1: You’re just not very frightening, to tell you the truth.
Answer 2: How do you know they’re not frightened of you? Are you some kind of behavioral arthropodologist who KNOWS what behaviors are exhibited by frightened spiders? Have you tested your hypothesis by observing their behavior around a different person, whom they are demonstrably afraid of?
Answer 3: They are afraid of you. They’re terrified. But the truth is you just look so deliciously TANTALIZING that they can’t resist having a taste before they scurry off to safety.
Despite having 8 eyes, they don’t see very well, except things that are quite close. The spider that crawled up your leg couldn’t tell you from a tree.
Most spiders lay out a drag line wherever they go. They’ll often drop from the ceiling in hopes that lunch will happen to get snagged on the web line. The spider isn’t hoping to find you; you’re an inconvenience. If it survives you, it will have to find its way back to the ceiling.
If a little puff of breeze happens, the spider could go from a vertical line to a diagonal against something else. From that lucky breeze, the spider gets something to build a web on.
We think of spiders as diabolical plotters, but they live on luck. If a meal doesn’t blunder in, the spider starves.
Speak softly and carry a big can of Raid.
I wonder, though, about Black Widows and other spiders that are harmful to humans.
A few years ago, just before Halloween, I was in a checkout line next to a man and his little daughter. She was looking at some Halloween decorations with spiders and webs. I told her, “Spiders are good guys.” She said, “I’m scared of them!” I answered, "They might be scared of you. " I guess that started her thinking.
These guys, too?
Consider that you may actually be a giant alien entity who only thinks you’re human. Look really closely at one of the spiders and see if you can find a small USAF / NASA / flag emblem on them.