You Shouldn't Be Killing The Spiders You Find In Your Home - An Entomologist Explains Why

Oct 05, 2018 by apost team

They’re creepy, they’re crawly, and most people don’t like them. In spite of this, there is one important rule when it comes to spiders--you should never kill the spiders in your home!

Counter-intuitive as this may sound, there is good, simple reasoning behind this rule: spiders are a major part of the environment and help to keep things clean and running smoothly.

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But how can this be? Aren’t spiders in a clean home something gross to be disposed of?

As much as we like to think of our homes as clean, tidy, and safe, little things get inside. Things including spiders and their food.

Spiders earn their keep in your home by eating the nasty things you REALLY don’t want in your home. Sometimes they even eat other spiders!

Generally, the spiders you find in a typical North American home pose little threat to humans.

To get an accurate sense of just what kinds of spiders we might be rooming with, researchers from North Carolina State University, lead by Matt Bertone, did a survey where they walked through fifty homes to determine what species were there bunking down with humans.

Every single home they surveyed had spiders. Every home they surveyed even had several different species of spiders living in it.

The most frequently discovered species in the homes were cobweb and cellar spiders. At least their names don’t sound too intimidating.

The most helpful thing these spiders do for you is to kill disease carrying insects in your home, especially mosquitoes. These guys aren’t there to make a meal of you, they’re there protecting you from others who would!

If you kill a spider, you kill not only an innocent creature who had no intent to harm you, you kill something that could protect you and is an important part of the ecosystem within your home.

Taking out apex predators can wreak havoc on the food chain.

A bit of arachnophobia is common. Sometimes even entymologists and arachnologists are affected by it! Spiders feel weird when they’re crawling on you, and they have venom. Venom! That stuff is bad!

The thing is that most of the time, that venom can’t even make its way into your skin.

Most spiders have fangs that are too weak to break your skin and venom that's too weak to cause problems for you.

Dr. Fiona Cross, featured in this video, explains how you can overcome a fear of spiders and even grow to love and be fascinated by them, just like she did.

If you find you really can’t stand the sight of a little spider in your home, you still don’t have to kill it.

Capture it, release it outside, and let it continue its job of policing the pests from outside of your home instead of inside of it.

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Pass this article along to others so you can help them learn how to keep their home pest free too!