So it’s October which means that Halloween is just around the corner! Of course I felt I needed to do a creature that was in keeping with the spooky theme so spiders were an obvious chose.
Often depicted as creatures of horror- you will see many of them hanging in people’s windows and on fake cobwebs in their homes during Halloween. But despite often being painted as the villain in so many stories, I’m determined to explain why I think spiders are actually pretty great and that we really should just give them a break! They are just incy winsy spiders after all! Most British spiders found in UK homes are harmless to humans, but lots of people are scared of them nonetheless.
Whether it's in the corner of our living room, in the bath or hanging quietly from the ceiling, the fact that they have 8 legs and 6 or 8 eyes sometimes seems to freak a lot of us out! It’s understandable- our basic human instinct to protect ourselves against danger is in all of us. Evolution shows that we respond positively to creatures such as dogs and monkeys (animals with big wide eyes and often just two or four legs are seen as safe to be around) Perhaps also because they share similar features found in human
babies so we can therefore identify with them. However our brain is designed to alert us to anything that may be a danger.
An evolutionary reason for the phobia of spiders remains unresolved. One suggestion is that our evolutionary psychology has taught us that the presence of venomous spiders led to the evolution of a fear of spiders, or made acquisition of a fear of spiders especially easy. So even when spiders pose little risk to us at all, the intensity of fear of spiders is still strong. Spiders are air-breathing arthropods- known as arachnids, that have eight legs and fangs which are generally able to inject venom and spinnerets that
dispense silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all orders of organisms. Spiders are found worldwide on every continent except for Antarctica, and have become established in nearly every habitat. In England, we are pretty lucky as we only have one type of spider that carries venom which is the false black widow spider. But in and around our homes there are three types of spider we see the most- the everyday house spider (large and black, they are the type that most people fear), Celler spiders (tiny body, thin long legs, they are often seen hanging out in the corners of your ceiling) and lastly the common garden spider (very beautiful, look almost striped, you can normally find them, hanging out on a dewy covered cobweb in your garden).
So now to why I want you to embrace spiders rather than scream at them-firstly, they are really very harmless to us, all three species mentioned above are not venomous. Second, they are brilliant little helpers at eating unwanted flies and biting bugs in our home like mosquitoes. And they are a vital part of the food chain for many of our favourite garden creatures including frogs and hedgehogs. Plus how can you not admit that spiders webs are really very beautiful? Also spiders in the countryside help to control the amount of pests that would otherwise eat all our food crops. If that won’t win you over then what about a little guilt- the life of a house spider is actually really very sad- most of them only live for one year! Sometimes two if they’re lucky. The spiders you see dashing across your floor from summer into autumn aren’t trying to suck your blood- honest! They are actually mostly just lonely males looking for females to mate with before they die. So maybe next time just stop and think before you
crush it with your slipper- they have a simple mission after which they will perish. Do we really have a right to kill them just for them being in our homes? My bedroom is a spider haven, I never kill them and I must have many under my bed but it doesn’t bother me one bit as I know they have their part to play in our wonderful world of nature. If I really have to (if only not to be squashed by someone else in the house) then I will relocate the spider outside. You can do this really easily with a cup and a piece of
paper which you slid under them. Please don’t use a brush- you will crush their soft bodies as spiders skeletons are on the outside. Just move or let them scurry off. And that’s my bid for spiders- so when you see all the spiders hanging in people’s windows this Halloween, just remember they are really not as bad as they look and they don’t deserve to be treated like the baddie.
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