Spiders? In my mouth? It's less likely than you think.

Spring break, in combination with two odd items in the news, has prompted me to pick up my special blogging pen again. I expect the flow of weird spider news will pick up as we move into warmer weather, so stay tuned for more!

If I were to buy two pet tarantulas, I'd certainly also make sure I also had a proper place to house them. So, when I saw the headline “Man saves money on buying home for his two giant tarantulas by keeping them in his MOUTH”, my interest was piqued. Was I really to believe that someone would be so hard up for cash that he would buy two pets and skimp on a place to keep them? Perhaps the salesperson at the exotic pet store told this man that he'd be a fool to buy a home for the spiders, since most people just keep them in their mouths.

I'd like to imagine that this man leads an exciting on-the-run lifestyle (maybe selling black market cocaine fireworks?), so that he just doesn't have the luxury of toting around a terrarium. He'd certainly culture an impressive reputation as the illegal explosives-drug dealer who literally speaks spiders, which would probably keep anyone from encroaching into his turf. Could make for an interesting Bond villian.

Or maybe he's into the minimalist lifestyle, wherein some people strive to only own 100 things? I guess I'd ditch the terrarium before my beloved pets, but if 2% of the things you own are large spiders that have to live in your mouth, you might be doing it wrong.

The final possibility I did not want to discount before reading the article was that the man's mouth might actually be a spacious, appropriate space to house arachnids. If his mouth contains a layer of soil, some bark as a refuge, and steady supply of crickets or roaches, then the housing situation might be pretty good. It would certainly be dark and moisture would be available, so the spiders could do alright!

Unfortunately, none of my hypotheses about this man seem to right: he just posted a video showing that he is willing and able to put two live tarantulas in his mouth. Instead, this serves as a demonstration of how tarantulas can be very tame and tolerant of handling, though I wouldn't recommend putting them in your mouth. Most people would probably be concerned about being bitten, especially since their fangs can be pretty big and deliver a dose of venom. However, I'd be much more concerned about urticating hairs.

The spider can scrape these tiny harpoons into the air where they will float into your eyes, nose, and throat and cause terrible irritation. Having a spider release these hairs from inside your oral cavity would be pretty horrific, so, please, buy a terrarium and don't sell heroin sparklers.

It's pretty obvious that those spiders didn't choose to be in the dude's mouth, but what about the SCIENTIFIC FACT that humans swallow an average of eight spiders per year while sleeping? We know spiders want to be in our mouth, so it only makes sense that they would wait until we were sleeping to set up shop in there. But why do they go in there? Is it some kind of mutualism gone wrong, like cleaner fish on coral reefs that pick parasites and bits of food from inside the mouths of larger fish? Are the spiders just curious explorers?

The truth of the matter is that there is no truth in the matter. The idea was fabricated back in early internet times to make a point about not believing everything you read on the internet. Ironically (I think?) this “fact” became widely circulated as internet truth, though it was designed to highlight the absurdity behind the very process that allowed it to achieve this status.

There's really no reasonable biology involved here: why would a spider even crawl into your mouth? Hopefully, you do not have flies or other arthropods living in your mouth to entice the spiders. Assuming you are alive and breathing, both the air movement and vibrations produced by your body would be sufficient to deter any spider. Try blowing gently on the next spider you see. They are not a fan, in part because they detect the movement of air with very sensitive hairs.

So, spiders are not going to willingly enter your mouth. Could they fall in? It's certainly not impossible, but spiders are highly coordinated creatures, what with all the legs to keep track of. Most also move with a silken support line so that they can quickly recover if they do fall or misjudge a jump.

But what would happen if you did swallow a spider? And it was pregnant!? Science shows that this event would lead you to seek out powerful hallucinogens to combat the danger posed by a pregnant spider living in your digestive tract. In fact, most medical doctors recommend LSD as a cure for swallowing a spider and her forthcoming brood. Or...wait...I may have gotten the cause and effect mixed up there.

I'd love to see the movie where cops pick this guy up and joke around about him being another “drugged-out crazy” before dumping him at a hospital. There, the staff decide to pump his stomach and out comes TONS OF SPIDERS! They ravage the hospital staff, jumping down everyone's throats, causing complete pandemonium. The military would have to be called in and ultimately atomic weapons would be used to control the outbreak. It would then turn out that the whole thing was just a nightmare being experienced by a baby spider, whose mother comes in to comfort it, explaining the myth of people swallowing spiders. I'd call the movie In The Mouth of Madness, if it wasn't already taken.