How many spiders do we eat in a year

IT’S a thought that strikes fear into arachnophobes everywhere – swallowing spiders in your sleep.

The idea that we eat eight spiders a year has been doing the rounds for decades but there’s good news for all of us who find that thought stomach-churning.

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It’s an urban myth.

It turns out that, we actually don't eat ANY spiders in our sleep at all.

The truth is that spiders have no interest in climbing into our beds let alone our gaping mouths.

According to Scientific American, the myth goes against biology.

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The eight-legged beasties like to live in places where there is prey and, unless you have an infestation of bed bugs, they are not interested in your bed.

Biologist Bill Shear, former president of the American Arachnological Society, said:  "Spiders regard us much like they’d regard a big rock.

"We're so large that we’re really just part of the landscape."

Which probably means that the old adage of “They’re more scared of you than you are of them” could also be false.

Just saying.

We recently revealed that the cold snap could bring a spider invasion into your home.

Here are 13 really easy ways to spider-proof your home

How many spiders do you eat in a year? The truth behind whether we eat spiders in our sleep

The myth has been knocking around for a while - and now scientists have explained whether it's true that we eat spiders in our sleep

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Do People Eat Spiders in their Sleep

Unwittingly eating spiders in your sleep is every arachnophobe's worst nightmare.

Come to think of it, even those of us who have no problem with our eight-legged chums probably aren't overjoyed by the thought.

Urban myths about the quantity of spider we're consuming has varied over the years.

Some would have us believe these snacks are pretty infrequent, others state we eat up to EIGHT of the long-leggedy beasties.

As for the truth behind this myth - it's GOOD news.

Unless, of course, you have a spider-eating fetish, in which case we don't really know what to say.

Simply put, we don't eat ANY spiders in our sleep.

In the past, people's anxiety over spiders in their rooms or close proximity has perpetrated the myth - and prompted some spine-tingling responses.

However, the truth is spiders are far more afraid of our gaping mouths - probably snoring away too - than we are of them.

Scientific American states that this myth ignores both spider and human biology.

Spiders stick to areas where there's prey to be caught. And, unless you're unlucky enough to have a bedbug infestation, your boudoir is of little interest to them.

"Spiders regard us much like they’d regard a big rock," says Bill Shear, a biology professor at Hampden–Sydney College in Virginia and former president of the American Arachnological Society .

" We're so large that we’re really just part of the landscape."

Then there's all the noise we emit while sleeping as we breathe, snore and have our hearts beat.

"Vibrations are a big slice of spiders’ sensory universe,” Crawford explains.

"A sleeping person is not something a spider would willingly approach."

So rest easy tonight and sweet dreams.

Know your medical facts from myths? There are a lot of old wives' tales out there. But where do they come from and what is the truth? This week, do we really swallow spiders while we're asleep?

What's the truth? 

Logical reasoning helps with this one. Most people move while they're asleep and that would scare spiders. Most people don't sleep with their mouth open—and even those who do, tend not to swallow if something enters it.

You can test this by putting your finger in someone's mouth as they sleep. They're far more likely to wake up and ask what on earth you're doing than try to swallow it. Also, spiders tend to avoid open mouths—if they didn't, evolution would have made sure they became extinct, instead of one of the most successful groups of animals on the planet.

Where did the myth come from?

It's thought that it was first mentioned in a book on insect and spider folklore in 1954. Then in 1993, a journalist called Lisa Holst wrote an article about the urban myths circulating in the early days of email and quoted this entirely false statistic as an example of how gullible people were.

The result was that people began quoting her article as the source of the "fact", despite Holst so clearly saying that it was untrue.

So there's nothing to worry about?

Theoretically, a spider could drop into your mouth if it was hanging from the ceiling.

But the chances that this would happen just as you opened your mouth and were about to swallow is so infinitesimally small as to not be worth worrying about.