True or False: You swallowed eight spiders this year

by Stefani Pollack (Subscribe to Stefani Pollack's posts)
Posted Apr 11th 2008 11:00AM
Filed under: On the Blogs

I was recently told that the average person swallows eight spiders a year while sleeping. Ewwwww.

I tried not to imagine spiders falling from the ceiling directly into my mouth. However, the image stuck in my head. How did I not notice eating these creepy creatures?

As soon as I got to my computer, I Snoped it out (looked it up on Snopes).

Answer: False.

It turns out that this statistic was invented as an absurd example of what people will believe just because it's on the Internet. I guess it worked since by the time it got to me, it was definitely presented as fact.

Have you ever swallowed a bug while you were sleeping? Did you wake up?

Tags: sleeping, spider, urban legend, UrbanLegend

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4-11-2008 @ 11:25AM

Nightfall said...

I had a (thankfully harmless) bug crawl in my ear while I was sleeping, and I woke up to a very strange sound. I couldn't figure it out until I got a Qtip.

4-11-2008 @ 12:10PM

ana said...

i didnt eat one, but last night a spider did fall onto my blankets real close to my face. it scared the crap out of me!

4-11-2008 @ 12:21PM

Jonathan said...

I didn't have a spider in my mouth, but I did have a centipede (now affectionately known as "El Jefe") enter my ear while I slept. I woke up and felt like I had water in my ear, so I did the same thing I do when I go swimming - I cocked my head and forced the offender out. What a shock that was.

I still completely freak out when I see pedes, and I've developed a sort of pedey-sense, too.

4-11-2008 @ 12:54PM

Mathi said...

I am not sure about eating them shile I sleep, but I am pretty sure I have eaten a couple while clearing bracken, pruning shrubs and trimming the fruit trees. There are tons and tons of spiders in my area, I am sure some of the tiny ones could have been breathed in without me noticing.

4-11-2008 @ 12:57PM

Sheryl said...

I woke up in the middle of the night once to a stinging feeling on the inside of my lower lip. At first I thought it was a mosquito bite but after my lip swelled to golf-ball size (it took about 8 hours to subside) we concluded it was probably a spider bite.

Scared the crap out of me - not because there had been a spider in my mouth, but watching your lip swell up that big is seriously bizarre.

4-11-2008 @ 1:27PM

Phil Evans said...

I once ate a nice big spider which was masquerading as a kernel of corn on a cob of corn. It was dark. They are bitter.

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