So I got up one morning and made way over to the bathroom to take a pee then brush my teeth. It's my normal routine, I do it every morning. Everything was going just fine and dandy, I felt nothing out of the ordinary, and saw anything to boot. I began to brush my teeth as usual, but when I spat out my toothpaste, I was horrified to discover I actually spat out quite a large spider with it! That freaked me out! I quickly drowned the spider in the sink, then checked the rest of my mouth to make sure he didn't have friends. Where had it come from? I was quite positive I spat it out of my mouth at the same time as my toothpaste. Had it perhaps crawled onto my toothbrush? Impossible, I washed that off before applying toothpaste. And I would have seen it if it had come from the toothpaste bottle! That only leaves one place! It was in my mouth to begin with. Every part of this story true, and to be honest, I am still a little freaked out by this. My guess is that the poor guy must have crawled into my mouth while I was asleep and nestled himself in there. What's up with that?
We've all heard this 'fact': Humans on average swallow approximately 8 spiders per year, mostly in our sleep. Ok, maybe not everyone has heard it, and if you haven't, it's ok to be a little freaked out, I was too. I mean 8 spiders, holy cow! Peter Parker got bit by only one, and that resulted in giving him superpowers and the sole responsibility of protecting an entire city! No one wants that! I cant even begin to imagine what swallowing 8 would do! But wait a minute, wait just one minute, how do we know that we swallow 8 per year? I had had my doubts about this so called 'fact', considering I've only heard it from a few friends and a Silly Facts iPhone app. So I began to do some research. I did not take long for me to discover that the answer is not what it would seem.
In article published by the University of Idaho, they dissmissed this as a total bogus joke. The chances of a spider crawling into your mouth without waking you up are slim at best. The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture said that it's a widespread urban legend, with absolutely no basis in fact. And that there seems to be the issue. You see, in the science community in order to prove something, you need to run a test or an experiment and then replicate that test in different ways until you get consistent enough results. That has not been done with the spiders, and really there's just no way to do it. So the fact that we eat 8 spiders per year is looking more and more like a myth. But as we all very well know, just because something cant be proven, that doesn't mean it's not true! I hit the research again to see if there was any evidence at all for this spider myth. I mean, I spat one right out of my mouth after waking up!
I found that Wikianswers.com claims we eat an average of 6-8 per year. (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_spiders_do_you_eat_a_year). Ok, laugh it up, I know that wikianswers isn't exactly a reliable source. A good rule of thumb is that if you wouldn't cite it for a research paper, it probably isn't reliable. So I kept digging, and soon discovered a story from Medical Doctor Jonathon West in Denver. After performing thousands of autopsies, he consistently found insect DNA less than 90 days old in the stomachs and large intestines of over 90% of the bodies. The quantities of DNA were large enough to lead him to believe that Americans (or at least his Colorado peeps) consume 8-12 insects varying in size over 90 days! That blows 8 per year out of the water! He then went on to claim that he made the entire story up. He had you going there for a while didn't he!
So what does this tell us? Based on the evidence, it looks as though it is truly a myth that we eat 8 spiders per year. What happened to me was convincing, but as far as the research shows, it was a total abnormality. It may be fun to believe that we really do swallow 8 spiders per year, but that is probably why the fact was made up, because it's so fun to believe. No one get's an adrenaline rush from reading "On average humans inadvertently swallow zero spiders per year." I think we can all take comfort in the fact that no spiders will be crawling into our mouths anytime soon... unless you're me of course.
Jake Carson, out
Sources:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-23997,00.html
http://insects.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=insects&cdn=education&tm=179&f=11&tt=13&bt=1&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth/myths/whileyousleep.html
http://insects.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=insects&cdn=education&tm=9&f=11&tt=13&bt=1&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.cals.uidaho.edu/edComm/pdf/BUL/BUL0871.pdf
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