How Many Spiders Are You Swallowing While You Sleep?

Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!

For some reason, many individuals have a strange and completely false belief that the average person, while sleeping, swallows somewhere between eight spiders a year and eight spiders in a lifetime. This is quite a jump in numbers, but most people are likely to have heard at least one variation of this theory involving involuntary nighttime spider guzzling.

In some parts of the world, eating insects and spiders is common.

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Thankfully, the truth is you probably won’t swallow even one spider in your sleep for your entire life based on a number of human and spider science-related reasons. Still, where did this belief come from, and why is it so prevalent?

The Mysterious Spider Ingestion Myth

Though this urban legend seems old as time itself, it actually has most of its origin stories in recent trickery. For example, it was once presented as “Real Fact” #31 on a Snapple cap (although, Snapple’s website doesn’t list it among its current “Real Facts”).

However, there are other sources that swear this myth came from an article in PC Professional magazine in 1993. Columnist Lisa Holst supposedly wrote a number of fake facts to show how people were too likely to believe what they read in email chains, the spider story being among them. The strange thing the article itself cannot be found through a Google search and the results don’t yield any actual quotes from it. There’s even a conspiracy that states the piece never actually existed in the first place!

So, where exactly did the rumor originate? It’s hard to say for certain, but with relief, Ripley’s can promise you that you’re not likely to swallow a spider while snoozing any time soon.

Humans vs. Spiders: Nighttime Edition

You and all your arachnophobe friends can rest easy with the knowledge that spiders aren’t climbing into your mouth while you slumber. First of all, spiders sense vibrations and humans are putting off all kinds of them while in dreamland. We breathe, our hearts beat, and we are probably snoring, so spiders know not to go spelunking in our mouths if they want to stay safe. According to Scientific American, Rod Crawford, the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture’s arachnid curator, states, “A sleeping person is not something a spider would willingly approach.”

What’s more, people who are sleeping are likely to wake up if they feel something moving across their faces, and most people don’t sleep with their mouths open wide enough for a spider to crawl inside. Though Crawford says people often tell him they have swallowed spiders while sleeping, they don’t usually have any evidence of the encounter, and no one has ever documented such an event. Since eight spiders a year seems like a lot for absolutely no concrete proof, it’s best to put this rumor to bed.

So, before you sew your mouth shut or cover it with Duct tape tonight, remember you’re probably not going to swallow a spider any time soon, even though the exact origin of this weird myth remains shrouded in a little bit of mystery.

By Julia Tilford, contributor for Ripleys.com

Source: How Many Spiders Are You Swallowing While You Sleep?