Thread: Do spiders crawl in my mouth and nose while I am sleeping?

Q. Do spiders crawl in my mouth and nose while I am sleeping?
A. 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!!

http://www.spiderzrule.com/answers.htm

Ewwwwww! I don't even wanna think about that.

I think a spider dropped on my bed behind my back one night recently. I tried to move around so I would kill it, wasn't sure it was a spider and didn't want to wake my hubby. Well, the next day I had a big bite on my stomach. Good thing it wasn't poisonous, it just itched for a few days.

I used my flashlight to search the bed but saw nothing.

http://www.brownreclusespider.org/ea...sleep-myth.htm

Interview with Brenda Gilmore | Eating spiders while asleep myth interview

It is frequently said that a spider can crawl into our mouth while we are sleeping, and that we can actually eat that spider without ever knowing. Brenda Gilmore, expert in spider bites and arachnids in general, sheds some light on this subject during the interview published below --all for the goodness of our sleep.

Interviewer : Tell us, Brenda, how many people have asked you about the chance of eating a spider while sleeping in your whole career?

Brenda : A LOT. It is in fact a frequent subject, and people's minds are very eager to believe and fear such things.

Interviewer : But why? Does it happen frequently? Have people been intoxicated or something?

Brenda : I will tell you this: every night, there are at least 5 billion people who rest in their beds in all the world, and even a bigger number of spiders which "work" at the same time. My answer is really a question: how many people do you know to have suddenly woken up with a spider trying to get into their mouths?

Interviewer : ha ha ha, I don't know of a single person, but still the subject worries the fellow man.

Brenda : yes. I think that Internet has something to do with this myth, and stories that go from one to another, and yet no one ever gets to meet the actual people who suffered such an incident.

Interviewer : I understand, yet the matter was born somewhere...

Brenda : Well... It is not impossible that such a thing may happen, but quite improbable. First of all, the mouth is very sensitive: The tongue, for example, is one of the most sensitive parts of our body. Imagine that something, not a spider but any insect, a cockroach, whatever you like...

Interviewer : Rather dis-like...

Brenda : (smiling) Yes, that is the exact point; something that is surely not a part of the bed or our body, but something with razor parts, pin like legs, hair...

Interviewer : Oh God!

Brenda : (laughing widely) Yes, but that is the point. A thing as such, entering your mouth, is automatically expelled by an unconciouss defense mechanism. You would probably shut your mouth, or turn the head away, or move away, or use your hand to push that thing away, or even wake up in the very instant. But, chew it? Swallow it? Not a chance.

Interviewer : I see.

Brenda : And I tell you this: spiders are not stupid. Ok, they are not clever, but they are clever enough to avoid a humid hole which is breathing. They do not enter the mouths of animals in the wilderness, neither do they enter the mouths of the human. They are trying to get their food, they tend to go to the light at night, where insects gather, not to dark wet breathing places such as a mouth.

Interviewer : And that's fine for me.

Brenda : If someone goes and puts food in your mouth while you are sleeping, do you think you will swallow it without waking up?

Interviewer : If it were chocolate, perhaps.

Brenda : Oh, I didn't know you like it (laughing).

Interviewer : What can I say? I've got it under my skin.

Brenda : Well, maybe I will try the experiment on you if I catch you sleeping.

Interviewer : is that a date?

Laughs.

Oh no here comes a pic.

Why did I read this
I may never sleep again. I really hate spiders. The other day I saw one on the awning of the back door, headed for the door. I grabbed (what I thought was the RAID) and sprayed that beast. I kept watching, next thing I know, here he is back up there crawling again. What the heck. Here I looked at the can and I had been spraying him with resolve carpet cleaner. All that was hitting him was air because the can was up. OKAAAY, found the Raid and did the deed. When I work out in the yard I have a can of raid with me at all times...