The claim that humans swallow an average of eight spiders per year while sleeping is an urban legend and is not true. Scientific and medical literature does not contain any formal records of such incidents.
Reasons Against the Myth
Several factors make it highly improbable for spiders to enter a person's mouth during sleep:
- Spider Behavior Spiders generally avoid humans, whom they perceive as large, frightening creatures. They are more interested in finding prey or mates in areas not frequented by humans.
- Human Environment A sleeping human produces vibrations from breathing, a beating heart, and sometimes snoring, which spiders detect as danger signals, causing them to steer clear.
- Awakening Reflexes Even if a spider were to crawl on a person's face, the sensation would likely wake the sleeper, making ingestion unlikely.
- Lack of Evidence Despite the widespread nature of the myth, there are no credible eyewitness accounts or scientific proof to support it.
The myth may have originated from a fabricated article published in 2001 by a fact-checking website to demonstrate how readily people would believe information found online.
