Why are people afraid of spiders?:

[Kingofalldems]

Link to tweet

[PJMcK]

1. Fun stuff!

A couple of years ago, while getting firewood from the bin, I was bitten by either a brown dwarf or a black widow. I didn't realize it at the time but within 24 hours, my hand had swollen to nearly twice its normal size. My heart rate was racing and I had a 101º fever. A trip to the ER and a regimen of antibiotics cleared it all up.

Now I always wear gloves when working around the woodshed. Spiders can be no fun!

[hlthe2b]

2. Don't get me started. I think we socialize some groups to feel this way but it incenses me.

I routinely scoop up the spiders I find and take them outside. I don't look so closely if it is a wolf spider in the basement (which don't bite, are nonvenomous, and most importantly eat other spiders), but heaven help me if someone visiting sees one.

Yeah, I would routinely kill a brown recluse or black widow, but those are not the majority--at least where I live.

But, the teen girls screaming hysterically as they nearly wreck the car is what annoys me. I remember encountering a group of girls coming off a hilly trail north of Atlanta with my then sweet-as-they-come yellow lab. The girls coming up spied my happy (and leashed) dog and immediately start screaming as though she were a charging grizzly bear. I stopped in my tracks and instinctively told them to "knock the hell off and that being young teen girls didn't give them license to be or act stupid." Well, I might have only been about 10 years older than they at that time, but they listened, chagrinned, and apologized. Their silly little attention-getting stunt had failed immediately. I just regret that so many think that is the kind of silliness expected from teen girls. It surely wasn't when I was their age.

[redwitch]

6. I am scared of spiders.

But rescue them. I know they are helpful. Most of them. I know I wouldn’t like it if people screamed when they saw me!

[hlthe2b]

7. ...

[Silver Gaia]

3. Because they bite?

And some have poisonous venom that can make you very sick or even kill you?

That is one huge spider! Heebie jeebies!

ETA: I catch and release them unless they are black widows or brown recluses. Most spiders are harmless and are helpful because they eat insects that are harmful to us.

That said, I think most humans just have an innate revulsion to spiders for the above-stated reason. I know I do. It just happens.

[bottomofthehill]

8. Even a small spider bite can suck

I got bit by a spider when mulching they garden beds. It turned into a nightmare, swelling, pain, infection, antibiotics two weeks of shit from what I looked at as a harmless spider.

[Silver Gaia]

12. This is true.

I have a bad scar on the underside of my right breast from what my doctor and I believe was a bite from an unknown type of spider that had crawled inside my bra before I put it on. It was painful and itchy and gave me a fever. Antibiotics were not working on it at first. It abcessed and required very strong antibiotics more than once to finally heal. I don't know for sure that this was a spider bite, but that house had lots of spiders, and nothing else made sense.

[Aristus]

4. Spiders are our FRIENDS!

n/t

[keithbvadu2]

5. And the driver at the end.... Shut the F up!

And the driver at the end.... Shut the F up!

[2naSalit]

9. I have a rule about spiders...

Especially after being bitten and made very ill with lasting effects even fifteen years later, if they are outside I won't bother them but if they come into my house, I decide who lives and dies.

Don't forget Hobo spiders can fuck you up too.

[Silver Gaia]

13. Yes. Hobo spiders are bad news, too.

Hobos make funnel webs.

[2naSalit]

15. And they travel quite a ways away from them to.

[Doreen]

10. Spiders don't scare me. I have friends who are scared of spiders

so if there is a spider when I am with them I catch it and put it outside. This actually upsets a few of my friends because they want it dead. I live in SW Washington and I do not know which spiders are poisonous so I do use some paper to scoop them up with and put them outside.

It drives me nuts when people start screeching and screaming about spiders or any other insect.

[Polly Hennessey]

11. As long as they stay outside and do

their job, I am happy. If they come in the house, sayonara

[UTUSN]

14. O.k., fessing up: That was me in the soundtrack.

[nolabear]

16. We're programmed to fear things whose movements we can't predict.

The top “irrational” fears people have are snakes, spiders, birds and cats. They all have the characteristic of not telegraphing what they’re about to do. Clearly cats to a lesser extent but it’s a characteristic.

I like all four. Palmetto bugs, now, I’ll run in circles and scream. Why? Because they unpredictably fly in your face. Or hair. Or mouth. Or...

[zanana1]

17. The spider looks terrified.