- Ever wonder if this fact is true? In your lifetime, you consume eight spiders while sleeping. According to Discovery Channel’s MythBusters, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, our breathing scares spiders away making this claim a myth.
- Fried tarantula is a delicacy in the town of Skuon, Cambodia. The palm-sized spiders are coated in a mixture of MSG, sugar, salt and garlic, fried in oil and eaten as a snack. Tastes like chicken.
- With eight legs and six joints per leg, spiders have 48 knees. Go ahead, count them!
- A spider the size of an 11-inch dinner plate—the Goliath birdeater tarantula—is found in the rain forests of northeast- ern South America and is the largest spider on Earth.
- Approximately 50 per cent of women and 10 per cent of men have some degree of arachnophobia—a fear of spiders. The 1990s, sci-fi horror film Arachnophobia frightens movie watchers with a deadly arachnid invasion of the small California town, Canaima.
- Orb weaver spiders produce silk with a tensile strength similar to steel. Researchers hope to someday produce enough of it for use in body armour.
- In the award-winning children’s novel Charlotte’s Web, Charlotte’s baby spiderlings climb to the top of a fence post at Zuckerman’s farm and demonstrate a technique called ballooning, where spiders release triangular-shaped, silk threads into the air and are carried away by wind currents. Some spiderlings are able to ride air currents for up to 25 days.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.
