Swallowing spiders?

Question

I heard that when we sleep we swallow spiders and they can crawl up your nose at night time. A cupple people told me they watched a documentary on TV that said we eat about 5 pounds of spiders within a year. Ewwwwwww! You think it's true?

Answer 1

"I think it would be highly unlikely that spiders would crawl into a person's mouth or nose while they sleeping. For one thing we move around a lot while we are sleeping and this would deter a spider from even crawling on you, let alone enter any orifice, especially one which is wet and dark. Breathing through your mouth or nose would also deter a spider from entering and most house spiders are too big to fit into a nose in any case. Spiders, like virtually all arthropods, flee from breath. After all, there are lots of vertebrates that eat arthropods, and if you're an arthropod and something is breathing on you, it's not a good idea to stick around.
For a spider to get into your mouth while you're sleeping, (a) you must have your mouth open when you sleep, which is certainly not something that everyone odes, so there's a big chunk of people who can never swallow anything; (b) there has to be a wandering spider in your immediate vicinity, also something which--for most people in the civilized world, at least--is a fairly rare occurrence; (c) the spider has to either jump or fall into your mouth from a long distance, because they won't go near your mouth otherwise (they're not suicidal), and the odds are pretty astronomical of a spider randomly dropping into your mouth from the ceiling.

There is a story about humans eating eight spiders a year in our sleep without knowing it and that it was supposedly tested by filming people in their sleep for a year. It is hard to believe that a group of people in different sleeping situations would have been filmed for a year or more to validate this statement. It is possible for a spider to walk into your mouth and trigger the swallowing mechanism at the back of the throat and this could in fact occur on a rare occasion. It may even be true that there are a few people out there who have unknowingly eaten eight spiders in the last twelve months. This still would not make such a generalisation be considered as true. I certainly wouldn't lose any sleep worrying about spiders while you sleep!! "

Answer 2

Supposedly, the average human swallows 4 spiders per year. This is kind of an urban legend, but who knows. Here are some links for both sides of the argument.
http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth/myths/whileyousleep.html

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mspidereat.html

Answer 3

If it have been genuine then hazard might recommend that we or somebody all of us know might have woken up at sometime in our lives to discover a spider in our mouth. i've got on no account experienced that & i've got on no account heard of all people else who did. I did as quickly as see a fly pass into somebody's mouth and re-emerge approximately 10 seconds later whilst the guy (my father) grew to become into napping interior the chair along with his mouth open.

Answer 4

I once knew a woman who swallowed a spider. It wriggled and wiggled and tickled inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed a fly, I guess she'll die. :) I love that story.

Answer 5

Would you rather the spider ate you?

Answer 6

that is a horrific thought but i also read that somewhere in the 'trivia' section... actually i refuse to believe it. it's gross!!!

Answer 7

of course that is not true... i have never eaten any spider... i am sure of that...

Answer 8

Yes...that's why so many of us get fat...even if we're on a diet.

Answer 9

wtf lol. u need to videotape yourself sleeping.