Is It True That You Swallow Spiders in Your Sleep?

The amount of spiders that you swallow in your sleep has become an urban legend that has spread like wildfire throughout the country. You may have heard in elementary school that the average person swallows up to 20 spiders in their lifetime.

Swallowing Spiders Myth: Is It Fact or Fiction?

It’s important to get to the bottom of this myth so that you can rest easy without paranoia of swallowing a spider as you sleep. According to legend, the average person is expected to swallow roughly 4 live spiders per year while asleep.

Yet many other rumors exist to exaggerate the tale. According to a Pennsylvania reporter, the average person may swallow up to a pound of spiders in their lifetime as they sleep. This, of course, is virtually impossible at the rate of 4 spiders per year; it would take up to 5000 years to swallow roughly 20,000 spiders to yield a full pound!

But back to the important question at hand. Alabama pest control experts estimate that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for someone to swallow a single live spider while sleeping. It’s even more comforting to consider that there is no medical or scientific documentation of such a scenario.

So where did this universally accepted rumor come from? Sources point to a 1993 PC Professional article, where a columnist named Lisa Holst wrote about how gullible people were when receiving supposed facts circulated via email. Holst was able to prove her point by creating her own fictional list of “facts”, thus birthing the popular spider swallowing rumor.

Myth Busted: Spiders Aren’t Attracted to the Human Mouth

For a person to swallow a spider in their sleep, they would have to sleep with their mouth wide open; if a spider were to crawl across their face and into their mouth, they would be likely to feel it and wake up immediately.

In an even more unrealistic scenario, it would be quite difficult for a spider to drop into a sleeping person’s mouth on a spider web from the ceiling. In order not to disturb the sleeping person, the spider would have to aim and land perfectly inside the mouth, which again must be wide open.

Before the case can be closed, it’s important to point out one final piece of evidence. It’s extremely unlikely that a spider would target the mouth of a large enemy, like a human. A spider has absolutely zero motivation to crawl into the mouth of a living, breathing person, where they would soon meet their demise.