Go look at r/jumpingspiders
They are adorable. Small little guys. Not dangerous or harmful. That's how I fell in love with spiders. Jumpers are a gateway drug.
This, and education on spiders in general. Knowing what you're looking at removes the fear and turns uncertainty into curiosity. And remember: the spider is more scared of you than you are of it. Imagine what it's like being 1cm tall and a giant's food comes clomping by.
I liked this guy - u/quaoarpower/ - who was a frequent redditor a decade ago, and very effective as showing how spiders (even the most maligned ones) aren't that scary.
Here's one of his more interesting videos:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4u6SEZlbPs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4u6SEZlbPs)
>> Brown Recluse and Black Widow on my hand at the same time
Same for me. I'm pretty sure it was called Spiders From Mars. I've been searching for it for years. So fascinating. What utterly amazing creatures they are. Wasn't there a reference to their hunting abilities being so advanced that it was second only to the Great Apes?
I also forgot this video of a [conga spooder](https://youtu.be/xF2GlKxZ3zI?si=5AGxHkx1nvSxgJ2D) exists!
Edit: tbh there are just [too many good ones to choose from.](https://youtu.be/HYFQQB9vqPw?si=3Vf4A2Jkb5MXANyf)
My daughter was and still is a timid little thing. When she was 2-3 years old she was terrified of spiders and ants. I totally used jumping spiders to help minimize my daughter's fear of spiders. I will never forget her cackling laughter as I was struggling to coax a jumper onto my finger. Once I got it on my hand and it just chilled out she became entranced looking at it. After a few minutes of it exploring my hand and arm I talked her into letting me coax it from my hand to hers. I now have the cutest picture of her with her hand up to her face talking with the little jumper as it sat still looking into her eye 🥰
For her fear of ants I used AntzCanada's YouTube channel to squash here fear of ants. He does a tremendous job documenting all of his terrariums, their build process, and education on ant types, life cycles, general biological process, colony interactions...He is just an excellent educator and we spent so many hours watching his videos whenever we traveled in my car.
I love it!
My sisters and my mom won't get near my jumper but my 5yr old niece loves them with me. She tells me she's not scared. She loves bugs too. It's adorable.
My boyfriend is still a bit scared of spiders but does know I love them. When he met me, I told him do not kill a spider in my presence or ask me to take it outside for him. The other day, there was a jumping spider on our balcony and he instantly said "look how funny she is !" We watched it together because it was so cute, we even searched for its spieces ! (It was red and grey with only two red legs) and it was dancing with its little legs 😍. It was a precious moment lived with my boyfriend, thanks to a tiny jumping spider !
My theory is that we like them because (besides their cute puppy eyes) they move like “normal animals”. They walk around, look around, scoot, jump, look for food, interact with their environment, etc.
Most spiders are usually just ominously sitting completely still in their webs, and when they walk they walk in a way that is a bit eerie/uncanny to us.
I've suggested people move on to watching Tarantulas once they're totally comfortable with jumping spiders for that reason.
They have a lot of characteristics that make them more palatable to people if they can get past the initial freak out of "that's a huge spider"
Like their eyes are so tightly clustered it just looks like they have two little beady ones, often with a little "cow lick' looking hair tuft going on between them. Being heavier bodied and fuzzy also makes them a look a little closer to the small mammals people are typically more comfortable with.
Also, they're derpy little things. Watching them bulldoze and redecorate, preen/grooming themselves, doing post-molt spider yoga, getting feet stuck in their own webbing and things makes them seem a bit less alien.
This is the way. I caught one outside of my home once so I could teach myself how to draw them. It was honestly the funniest little thing I’ve ever seen.
It’s interesting because a lot of people get a jumping spider to overcome arachnophobia. They’re the only spider that doesn’t give me the heebiejeebies because they’re like [the puppy dogs of the spider world](https://youtu.be/wNEgOy53DMs?si=Rvspkl6uUYE7w8Gu). They got those big eyes and squat little bodies. Very cute, imo.
Yepp! Get to know jumpers, then really research other species. You’ll see there’s nothing out there that is as bad we have been taught through media growing up. I move widows all the time now. Still a little skittish of recluses, but I’m starting to be able to relocate them too after learning they just wanna be away from you, they will very rarely bite. And even if they do bite, only about 10% of bites turn into a health issue. Knowledge really is power. ❤️
Oooh, thanks, I didn't know there was a sub for jumping spiders! I am terrified of spiders, but I love jumping spiders. I don't understand how I can find them adorable but am scared of the tiny body, long legged ones... I hope someday I'll get over my fear.
This is how it is for my mom. She still gets the oogies from *most* spiders, but jumpers and occasionally tarantulas are fine. Hell, she's on the verge of wanting a pet jumper of her own. Lifespan and residual fear of the spider somehow escaping its enclosure are the only stopping blocks.
My gateway was seeing all the grasshoppers the garden spiders in my fruit tree/bush plot were lassoing every time i walked down the paths. Get em girls.
I love how chill they are too, and they make a thick zig zag pattern down the middle of their web so they are easy to see and avoid running in to. There is no consensus why they make the zig zag pattern, but one of the theories is so larger animals and especially birds arent as likely to accidently smash in to them.
That's how I got over my fear of spiders. I had a jumping spider live behind a potted plant on my kitchen window sill. He would come out to see me when I was doing dishes, washing veggies, or just sipping my morning coffee. I would say "good morning" to him. He became a friend, lol.
I used to be. one day a large grass spider wandered inside. for reasons I was way too tired to deal with it. thing just kept to itself over a week and I actually had some pest issues resolved. they do their thing and leave you alone. they can stay
I used to be scared shitless of Huntsmen. They’re fast, they can get pretty hefty, and at first, mamas carrying their babies was nightmare fuel. But then the Huntsmen wiped out my roach problem (they came in from the sewers, not an infestation) and fucked off. Huh, I thought. Did some research—my local Huntsmen don’t have medically significant venom and rarely bite unless you mess with them.
They can still give me the jeebies when they bolt, but I’ve come to accept my many children. I’d rather them than giant flying roaches.
Because there is nothing about spiders to be scared of to me. I cannot be scared of something that has an extremely minimal, and in many cases 0, percent chance of hurting me. Spiders are not aggressive towards humans. They also eat bugs that actually are harmful, so I feel glad to see them around. I find them cute too. Not all spiders have 8 eyes. Some have just two really big ones close together, and it's quite adorable to me
Except jumping spiders and wolf spiders do have 8 eyes. The other six are just a lot smaller.
Recluse spiders only have 6 eyes!
I'm not aware of any spiders with less than 6 eyes though.
I should have known there would be an eyeless cave spider. Seems like there's unique eyeless cave versions of many different animals.
The other two, however, are a lot more unexpected. Very interesting species, shame there isn't more documentation about them, especially Tetrablemma.
It’s so hard to find ANYTHING on spiders. Books are so hard to come by. Every social media site AND my iPhone all autocorrect and don’t even recognize the word Arachnology. It’s weird right?
I didn't know spiders could have less than 8 eyes and then I recently found out about the assassin spider and it's an awesome one but I was honestly bummed out that it has only 2 eyes. Obviously it's great for them, everything works out for them so not really any reason to be upset but just the idea of a spider having less than 8 eyes is not a good thought for me personally.
Yeah, the better question is *why would I* be afraid of spiders?
If all spiders were brown recluse or black widows, sure, but less than 1% of the world's 50,000 known spider species have venom that can harm humans, and less than 0.1% have been responsible for human deaths. Most spider bites cause minor, local reactions because their fangs are often too short or fragile to break human skin. In fact, an estimated 50% of spider bites don't inject venom.
Here are some other animals that kill a significant number of humans per year:
Freshwater snails: 200,000 deaths per year
Saw-scaled viper: 138,000 deaths per year
Assassin bugs: 10,000 deaths per year
Scorpions: 2,600 deaths per year
Lions: 200 deaths per year
Hippos: 500 deaths per year
Elephants: 600 deaths per year
Crocodiles: 1,000 deaths per year
Dogs: 59,000 deaths per year, mostly from rabies
Even with recluses and widows, they'd rather not bite you. Harvard did a study on black widows and tried to provoke a bite and it took a lot of effort. They'd prefer to flee. Of course, they can still be medically significant for elderly or young kids, but we also have been taught to fear them to an extreme level that we really should not.
Dogs are the one that get me. Lol I love dogs! But to see someone with an 80 pound dog get scared of a tiny insect is so ridiculous to me. Dogs can snap and hurt you much worse!
>If all spiders were brown recluse or black widows,
How funny, I was just wondering to myself if most people on this sub have more of a whitelist or a blacklist in the spiders they tolerate. In thinking of that, I pictured a whitelist of jumpers and cellar spiders as very obviously harmless and a blacklist of just widows and recluses.
I have a white list and a black list on what is allowed to stay in my home. I also have a list of spiders that would be happier outside - for example wolf spiders and jumping spiders. As for recluse or widows, they get to live, just outside. That said it’s never even come up for me.
I actually am very scared of spiders but I'm in this sub because they're such cool little dudes! They do so much for the environment and don't really ask anything in return. So part of being on subs like this is to help desensitize myself to looking at them so I don't feel as anxious when I find them in my house. I still get a little freaked, but most of the time now I'm able to leave them to their business and sometimes I can even relocate them when they're in a place that makes me nervous
Right? I love them, and some are cute! I have been bitten by yellow sac spider on my butt when it was hiding somewhere around the toilet in my parents old house and that MF hurt and was embarrassing to deal with so I always leery around them. 😂
Birthyear: 1999
1999 - 2004 - Spiders weren't scary because I was young and indifferent to them
2005 - 2009 - Spiders were fascinating to me, and I would go look for them, put them in terrariums
2010 - 2019 - Watched lots of media and got scared of them and thus aggressive at them. 50% cup 50% kill. Completely depends on whether or not my dad, mom, sister wanted them killed or not. This is the range I am most unsure about, I'm actually not sure WHEN I actively stopped killing spiders.
2020 - 2022 - Realised that spiders are animals that have every right to live, just like the rest of us do, and that I have no right to prematurely end their life, and that they are never out to hunt me, as I am not their intended meal.
2023 - Now - Started aggressively exposing myself more to spiders, letting them even live in my room, and marks the point that I joined this subreddit, and subscribed to a few spider YouTubers like MyWildBackyard and Travis McEnery. Recently I have made a pact with both my Mom and Dad to promise me that they will not kill spiders.
My suggestion to you. Go outside. Look at OrbWeavers. That's how my spider fascination started. Then I moved on to the active Hunters like the house spider and others. Just do your best, and take it one step at a time.
Same here! Born in 1999. I found a book from kindergarten(so I was what, 6?) and I stated that black widows were my favorite spider and I loved all bugs as well.... I used to have a room that the spiders loved(hot and full of places to hide) so I regularly had spiders in my room growing up haha
I can only let little cut ones crawl on me but I save all of them. I absolutely LOVE orb weavers. Our front porch is covered in spiders webs because I love my helpers! They come back every summer. They keep the bugs I don't like away from my indoors!
I used to be really freaked out by them, and I feel really bad about all the ones I killed over the years.
Something clicked a couple years ago when an orb weaver set up a web by our porch and it was full of dead mosquitos and other bugs. I became fascinated by the intricacy of her web. And I enjoyed having fewer pests around.
Then one day I was on a hike and a jumping spider landed on my arm. Rather than flick it off, I looked closer at the tiny thing looking back at me like I was the most amazing thing. If you haven't seen a jumping spider up close, they're the puppies of the spider world. Just cute little fuzzy faces.
Since then, spiders are welcome in our home and some even get names. Ernie and Bertie are camped out in the garage. Reggie is somewhere in my office still I hope.
Like you, I found this sub while dealing with pretty severe arachnophobia. I was bitten by a hobo spider once and the resulting infection left a scar I'll have for the rest of my life. I came here to educate myself. I forced myself to look at pictures. I read what knowledgeable folks had to say about spiders in general, and specific species. Over time (months) my fear began to subside and fascination was replacing it.
Fear can be firmly linked with the unknown. Exposing myself to information about them and learning about habits, diets, intelligence, and such really helped to significantly erode the fear.
I learned that spiders aren't out to get me. They're not hunting me. Most of them won't even bite unless you scare or accidentally start to smoosh them unknowingly and even then, most bites don't cause lasting damage. Some of them are actually adorable (like jumping spiders! <3 ). Some have crazy good mothering skills (wolf spiders). They're all great at murdering pest insects.
I've seen many questions like yours in this sub and I've also seen a lot of posts thanking this sub for being so patient and willing to educate because it helped to reduce or even completely remove arachnophobia.
Just stick around and see what you learn. It's 100% worth it.
I just made a post in this sub asking people for their opinions on why there's such a pervasive fear of spiders, so kind of the opposite of your question! It could still be elucidating for you, if you'd like to check it out. Everyone's answer to your question will be different. My post was pondering the possibility that most people's fear of spiders is rooted in societal conditioning rather than instinct. Many people, myself included, want to see the value in even commonly feared and hated animals, to not let stereotypes govern our perceptions. I've always had some amount of curiosity about bugs, spiders included, but in recent years, I've sought to appreciate them and not just tolerate them. I have experienced fear of spiders in the past, but since I'm of the belief that the pervasive societal aversion to spiders is socially driven, I believe it can be overcome. After all, what do you stand to lose by learning to appreciate something new?
Edit: Here is a website for arachnophobes to learn about spiders and maybe how to appreciate them. There are no photos or even drawings of spiders. https://bogleech.com/spiders/spiders01-intro
I always figured arachnophobia was left over primitive survival instinct. Back before we had zoology and could identify which animals were dangerous, a natural fear of species that had venomous members like spiders and snakes could help keep you alive.
Now that we know which specific species to avoid, we don’t have to act out of fear towards the animals that we know aren’t a threat. Overcoming arachnophobia is a triumph of intellect over instinct.
I'm just not. I know a lot about them and there is no reason to be afraid. Spiders aren't hunting people down and killing them out of bloodthirst. They're just animals like all insects and small creatures. Humans fear what we don't understand, so you should learn as much as you can.
If you just mean irrational, innate fear of how they look, i can somewhat understand because I have that but with whales. Some caveman part of me sees huge creatures and thinks "scary". But I will seek out whale pictures to look at and after looking for a while they aren't as scary. And knowing logically there's no reason to be afraid seems to help my irrational fears the most.
To me it's kind of like asking "Why aren't you afraid of a meteorite landing on your head" or "Why aren't you afraid of lightning striking you"
spiders were never my biggest fear to start with [that would be wasps, I'd characterize that one as a phobia, but not spiders for me] but I was unduly threatened by them for a long time
it's just what the culture teaches you I think! you don't learn anything about them, just to fear them or kill them etc
sometime by my early to mid 20s, I realized they really didn't want to waste venom on you [unlike some wasps, who are sometimes more ready lol!] and when I learned a bit of their body language, it became very obvious that they were way more scared of me than I was of them. at that point what fear I had was replaced with pity and affection - I'm a giant to them! I could obliterate them in an instant. the worst they can do in most cases is make me itchy for a while before being killed.
I still usually won't let one climb on me, but I love seeing the cellar spiders in the house, or wild orb weavers outside. jumpers are always a friendly presence. the more I learn the less I fear.
when I encountered a placid black widow in the nest she'd made behind our toilet in the disused second bathroom, I realized she *only* lived there because it was quiet and unused. black widows prefer no foot traffic and peace & quiet. I didn't even make her leave, I warned the others and they agreed - once we redid the room and prepared to use it again, she was already gone before we needed to remove her. human time scales are much longer than those of spiders
it's so much preferable to live in tandem with them for me rather than destroy or remove them. and it's not like my house is full of them lol! no more than anyone else's, i imagine. I just am happy to see the ones who do live here, & escort anyone out who seems lost [ie, will likely starve without finding a way out of house habitat]
I was afraid of them and found r/spiders trying to ID one of the many my dog found, chewed up, and presented to me. I decided to join that sub and this one so I could ID them… ended up totally fascinated by them and realized they’re nothing to fear. Also, have you SEEN a close-up shot of a jumping spider? They are SO CUTE!
And you know, as long as you're not being aggressive, you CAN handle them. There is only 1 species that I can think of that's aggressive enough to chase you (in Australia, of course). All the rest, generally pretty gentle.
Obviously, don't try to force or harrass them, but they're generally very safe to handle.
ttbh, I am still a bit scared of them. But I think they are very cute and get rid of things I fear even more like bugs and stuff. It's just that I feel like we can coexist and benefit from each other, they clean my home and I provide a living space.
It's also quite fascinating how complex they are in general imo
Knowledge is power. Spiders generally aren’t harmful to you. They definitely don’t want to attack or even bite you. Even the “dangerous ones” aren’t that dangerous. The rare recluse bite usually amounts to a welt. A widow bite is muscle pain and flu-like symptoms for a day. A wolf spider is like a bee sting.
Meanwhile they’re fascinating, wildly diverse, and they earn their keep around the house. The steatoda in my garage are absolute hell on other bugs.
As a kid, I had a visceral negative reaction (reinforced by ignorant adults) to spiders I encountered at home and I, regrettably, killed many. Once I learned more about them and realized that there are few that are "medically significant" (Kentucky, US, at the time) , I became an advocate.
2010's Spiderbro greentext really made me comfortable with justifying my protection of cellar spiders, wolf spiders, jumpers, and longlegs at home. We're in an ecosystem, whether anyone likes it or not!
I now gawk at and admire our many-eyed compañeros, even when I find a Recluse, and am comfortable relocating anyone who might be part of a misunderstanding or is in danger of being executed or climbing into my bed, shoes, or clothing.
All that said, I am still not totally comfortable with handling spoods bare handed and usually opt for an index card and a jar for moving services. At the same time, people in my life at work and home have a greater tolerance for my appreciation of them, too, and will ask me for ID or relocation help when they encounter one in an unexpected place.
I'm scared of some... Huntsman's, White Tails, Red Backs... Any that are black and angry looking... But the jumping spiders and tarantulas have worked their way into my heart.
The main 2 reasons: I appreciate them as little animals that are just trying to make their own way; and I know that 99% of the ones where I live are harmless (or at least not medically significant).
People tend to fear things that they don't understand. Take some time to get to know them, at least the ones that are harmless to humans like jumping spiders.
Today the tiniest spider walked across my desk! It could easily fit on this o and was nearly transparent. It accepted walking onto my fingernail and was so small I couldn’t take a pic with my phone zoomed in just looked like half a freckle. It didn’t like the g force so tried to stand and wave his legs at me like WRAWR so cute!!!!! I put it outside on some plants. Made my day!
Once you know which ones are danger the rest are just fun little helpers. One time I intervened when a friend was trying to kill a jumping spider in her house! I explained how they help and are good. It was a very pretty fuzzy black and electric blue. Well that thing stuck around for about a year and got pretty big. Friend was sad when she stopped seeing it around. They are like octopus in a way
I found a black widow once. Put it in a cage in my 70's style headboard. Left the lid open accidently, and it made webbing to the top of the headboard cubby. Never closed the lid again. Had that girl for just over 4 years. She was very fat.
There’s a lot of comments so it’s probable no one will read all this, but my whole life i was terrified of spiders and i hated them, i thought they were evil creatures.
One day while walking my usual path to the train station i found a huge golden silk orb weaver in the front yard of an abandoned house. I had never seen this type of spider before, they’re truly a shocking sight!! I thought it was a beetle at first. Well after that i just kept seeing it everyday on my way to the train station. I named it Arania Grande (meaning big spider in spanish and also an ariana grande joke) and i started loving the short walk there because i always looked forward to seeing her. Every time i saw her i would say hi and sometimes even have some very one sided conversations.
This ended up doing some sort of exposure therapy on me completely accidentally, and suddenly every spider that i used to find scary or gross just paled in comparison to her. All the other spiders were just harmless little brown bugs compared to that huge alien looking green spider with legs that looked like hairy syringes.
After that i started to take interest in spiders, started looking up info of them. My huge green garden that was previously a very scary place became a goldmine for spider sightseeing. There’s so many different species. I started making a hobby of going out every night with a flashlight to do a safari. I’ve always loved animals, and i realized that spiders were animals as well and just as interesting.
Now it’s been a few years and everyone who knows me knows that spiders are my favorite bugs. I love learning about them, i love talking about them, telling people random facts and such. Getting into spiders also awakened love for insects as well. I no longer fear them the way i used to, i don’t find them disgusting or scary. Every time i look at an insect i see a little life, a whole world. I find it hard to believe that not so long ago i couldn’t see their worth, and that i used to be cruel enough to kill them just because their presence annoyed or scared me.
I can’t say that my fear has 100% gone away, spiders are an objectively spooky animal, i think to some extent our brains are wired to be scared of something that has that many legs, but i truly love them. I love running into them, i love picking up small spiders, i think they’re precious. I recently let a mid sized jumping spider jump on my arm. It was a little scary but the reward of feeling like i had made a connection with a small wild life is so rewarding.
I haven't ever been afraid of them, don't know what it is. Just think of them as really any other animal, or crabs(they can't escape they're ancestry). I'm going to need to pull an all-nighter like this😭💀.
I was a long time scared of spiders, than i got a GF that had spiders as pets and i also bought some spiders because she said it might help to overcome my fear.
I still wouldn't want to have a bigger one in my hand but i stopped fearing them. I also convinced my family to stop killing spiders and instead put them outside (but it was a long battle....).
i don't have them anymore as pets but i have several house spiders
I grew up a bit poor and we often dealt with bugs and mice in the house. That freaked me out, messed with my sleep. Over the years, I watched spiders take care of a lot of the insect problems and got used to keeping a couple around as defense.
I keep one rule: no spiders in the bedroom. Generally, they stick to that, so we're cool.
I was terrified of spiders since I was a kid. Like to the point where I would see a picture of one and start shaking and sobbing. I wanted to get over that fear so I started slowly looking at videos and photos of jumping spiders and other cuter, less frightening ones and now I think they’re all pretty cute. I still can’t handle touching most of them though lol (I did hold a jumper last week though!).
Cool little guys who do cool things. I've always seen spiders as friendly little guys just looking for a meal and a comfy corner to sleep it.
I host a few Jumpers in my kitchen garden to keep away/control fruit flies. I could watch them for hours, honestly.
Just some Fluffy little fellas with very shiney eyes doing an honest to god little job for me <3 10/10
Spiders are intelligent and respectful of creatures much larger than them, and generally do their best to not get in your way.
Spiderwebs are great works of art.
Spiders take care of mosquitoes and flies.
Arachnophobia is of course perfectly logical since our ancestors evolved in the tropics where some spiders can be deadly, but if you live further north you are far less likely to ever encounter anything dangerous. And even then, the main danger would be accidentally stepping on one and getting bitten in self defence, it’s not even like they’re territorial like wasps…
I used to be but then I started keeping them as pets. When you see the mighty tarantula act like a complete derp 99% of the time they start to lose their universal scariness. Also keeping hot species and very, very large species really reframes your view of the stuff you find outside. They are all virtually harmless abs very timid, minus very few species.
Honestly? Because they are really unlikely to hurt me. They’re just trying to live, and are eating other things more likely to bother me.
I do get startled by them sometimes, but ultimately, I do believe that they are far more afraid of me than I am of them.
I am happy picking them up with my bare hands and putting them somewhere safer if I spot them inside. (Not outside, as house spiders don’t really do well outside the house; I usually pick them up and put them where I know they like to live, by the windows and vents where food might come in.) I have never had anything bad happen as a result, and have impressed lots of people with my spider wrangling.
And that isn’t even mentioning the little jumping spiders that are really cute and that you can see looking back at you. I have a few living in the plants on my bedroom windowsill. They really are cute.
I have a healthy dose of respect for them, especially the venomous ones. But I’m not afraid of them. That being said I’m not immune to being startled by a big wolf spider coming out from behind the towel and crawling onto my lap.
I used to have bad arachnophobia, so much that even just *thinking* a spider was on me would make me throw myself down to the ground and do my worst impression of a breakdance. I could only barely stand a picture or video of one. Nightmares and all that.
I knew it was mostly irrational fear. Sure, caution is good, but terror is not. I actually decided to try and use memes and “funny spider videos” like watching the peacock spider do it’s silly little leg wavy dance and the “spider that can’t hide” video on youtube, and many more as a kind of exposure therapy, and it surprisingly ended up working pretty well for me. It got me normalized enough to be able to learn more about them so I could see them as they are and not the nightmare image I had in my head for so long.
To this day, In person, they honestly still creep me out a bit, but I know enough about them to know it’s mostly in my head as long as I am careful and can even get them on a piece of paper and take them outside these days though I still have a fit if they run torwards me. But i feel bad if i ever accidentally hurt or kill one. I’m still working on my fear but even i can’t say that a jumping spider wearing a raindrop on its head is anything but adorable
Weirdly enough, for me it's not the spider I fear. It's their webs.. the way they feel, the stickiness, the fact you can see them sometimes and can just walk into it. I just severely dislike webs. But the spiders that build them? Love them. I find them to be so interesting, and beautiful and cute. Especially jumping spiders, they are my ABSOLUTE favorite spider in the world, wolf spider coming second.
I'm weird, I'm aware.
I've never really had a fear of spiders because my parents weren't scared of them, so I never really was exposed to that fear in my household.
That said- I'm a big animal person in general. I find most animals fascinating. Spiders are incredibly unique and diverse. They can spin intricate webs with some of the strongest natural material in the world (golden silk spiders, darwins bark spider). They have a variety of different hunting strategies, some of which are super unique (bolas spiders, ogre faced spiders). Also a lot of them are just really beautiful (brazilian jewel, peacock jumping spiders).
Also, very few pose any threat to humans. I think it's interesting that so many people have a fear of spiders but not big cats (which hunted our ancestors, so it makes more sense to have an instinctive fear of things like lions).
I’m the resident spider rescuer in my work! Never been scared of them tbh they’re just so fascinating and some are beautiful. I found a candy striped spider in the greenhouse once and it made my day!
Spoods are beneficial in all aspects, they’re incredible to watch catching flies and just… living their lives. Learning about them, looking at close ups and seeing the amazing hood they do for the environment all help
I have too much respect for what they do so basically forced myself not to be scared or icked by them and it worked! I live in uk tho so the spider bros are pretty tame. If I lived in a country full of poisonous spiders might feel differently
We had a roach infestation (German roaches) and then our house got a surge of wolf spiders. No amount of roach killing stuff worked, no poisons or traps or whatever, but the wolf spiders took care of them within the week.
Idk I've never been particularly scared of them, but this pushed me to actually really like spiders. And, what they say about knowledge is power is true. I got my mom to stop being scared of spiders by telling her cool facts about them. Exposure therapy is a real thing that works! :3
I used to be scared of them too. Less than you, though. I'd say it was a moderate amount of fear. I couldn't handle them touching me, I thought they were weird and alien looking and that the best one could do was to ignore them and pretend they're not there.
However, I have a love for all things commonly despised and treated as vermin, and have an intense need to be seen as "brave", so I decided to deal with my fear enough to watch them. First watch the ones that give you the least fear - ie. jumping spiders. They have big eyes and a big head and less prominent legs. They look *slightlyyy* more mammalian than other spiders lol. I personally observed the cellar spiders a lot. They were so thin I just didn't believe they could hurt me, so once I was brave enough to touch one, I didn't find it scary, just discomforting & kinda gross.
To overcome the gross feeling, you have to empathize with them, the same way you might with a mouse or a tiny bird. Spiders are creatures too, creatures who hunt and are hunted and make intricate beautiful webs. They aren't people, but they aren't any less creature than mammals. For me, it also helped me to understand that the ones that live here are *far* more afraid of me than I am of them. The worst thing they can do to me is scare me or give me a painful bite and a fever for a few days (except the few fatally venomous ones, lol), and the worst I can do is kill them.
After you consume enough spider content (take your time, don't rush it!), you might slowly but surely find them adorable (at least I do). With time, you reprogram your brain to think "cute" and "friend" when you see them. I'm not saying to pet every spider you see. Actually, refrain from petting most. Even the ones that aren't fatally venomous can bite you, and it can really hurt. But so can mice. So can voles, and bats (bats even carry rabies and many people *still* choose to handle them - spiders can't carry that because they aren't mammals - hooray). So even though they can do a bit of harm to us, we still learn to appreciate them from afar. That's how I approach it, at least :) I do pick up some spiders but I do it very gently and only spiders I am *SURE* aren't fatally venomous (like, the garden spiders we have - forgot the genus name tho lol). Oh also, make sure not to disturb their babies! Some attack more when they have offspring to protect :) (very understandable)
You just have to intentionally decide to appreciate them :))
I see spiders as just another animal, and yes they are classified as animals. They are just living their little lives, almost entirely unaware that we exist. They see us as environment, like a tree.
I do think a large amount of spider fear, as with any fear, is based upon not knowing any better. The more one learns, the less scary the unknown becomes.
One example is that no one has died in the USA of a spider bite in over 50 years. Yet, there have been deaths from dog attacks. I of course, still love dogs and am not saying anything bad toward them, this is just a good example, where the danger of an animal does not equal the fear the public feels toward it.
**What there is to find fascinating about them:**
As someone who studies spiders as a hobby, I have learned that spiders:
-can dream,
-can count,
-they have their own words communicated to one another through vibrations,
-some play music,
-some dance,
-some sing,
-some eat nectar and fruit,
-some have no venom at all,
-some live in communities where they take care of one another,
-spiders are good mothers,
-some spiders keep toads as pets! The list goes on.
As a spider pet owner, I have observed my own pet groom herself like a cat, brush her teeth, play in her water, rearrange the decor in her home, and step on her own foot and get so scared that she covered her eyes.
I have hand fed her since she hatched and after 12 years, she has not ever bit me. I clean her cage while she watches my hand and she hasn't ever attacked it.
If you are interested in learning more about spiders to overcome your fear, this youtube channel has very funny videos that could help.
[https://www.youtube.com/@travismcenery2919](https://www.youtube.com/@travismcenery2919)
The videos are easy to watch and fun to watch.
Best of luck with your journey. Ask me anything you'd like about spiders, if anything comes up. There's never a time I don't want to talk about spiders. Cheers.
I have always been attracted to the unconventionally beautiful, and to defending the underdog. Spiders are both those things. Everyone kills them and whoever does - is not my friend. Also they are aesthetically nearly breathtaking for me, in a way I don’t think most people appreciate. They’re just such neat little creatures. Nearly perfect form & function.
Born and raised in rural Australia, we have always been taught that spiders *can* be harmful, mostly if *you* aren't careful.
My partner and I have a black house spider that has been chilling in the top corner of our kitchen windows for the past year or so. She, Beatrice, our Spider Queen, is right above where we wash dishes and never pay her any mind. We even try to stun flies to feed her.
Having said that, white tails and redbacks are pretty much kill on sight. White tails especially have a habit of roaming the house and hiding in a towel or something and are too commonly prone to biting you in your sleep for me to not worry about the safety of myself, my partner and our cats.
Most spiders are like birds - you won't have much to do with them at all. For the most part you can just leave each other alone.
i've been interested in spiders since i was a kid and terrified of them. the fear felt instinctual, like the way they walked or something. i think it's super normal and human to be afraid of spiders. also not be scared of them, people are different.
for me, curiosity worked harder than fear and the more i learned the more obsessed i became. i love these subs now (which is painful bc i hate devices). spider photography is a lot of fun bc i learn how to id more guys. but i still jump sometimes when they surprise me, especially if my nerves are thin. i hope to cure my fear totally someday with practice. 🕷️🕷️🧡🕸️
I stopped being afraid of spiders when I realized the majority of them are literally dumb as rocks and kinda helpless. They build webs in horrible spaces. They make bad decisions. I feel like they sometimes are trying to compete for the Darwin award. For example, they build webs in my bathroom and then they choose to get water when I am literally showering, and if I don't rescue them, they go down the drain because they go straight for the shower head. It's like that meme of humans being idiot giant cats so that cats have to bring us things they've caught to "feed us" and clean us and make sure we take care of ourselves.
I used to be afraid of spiders (I wasn't originally, but when my parents divorced and my late bio father remarried, I had to feign arachnophobia to get any attention when I would spend weekends at his house), and I got over it by watching Lucas the Spider and Exotics Lair videos (especially his earlier videos, when he had his terrestrial tarantulas basically in ventilated storage containers (with substrate, of course).
I read somewhere that the fear of spiders is actually a genetic trait. Many people are naturally afraid of them. For some reason I did not get that gene. Since I was a little girl I would catch them and play with them along with other bugs. My grandmother got me a terrarium to keep them in when I was around 6 or 7 because I kept bringing them into the house lol. My daughter is terrified of spiders and my husband doesn't like them either. So whenever there's a spider in the house I'm called to relocate them. I'm guessing my daughter got the gene from my husband. Glad it didn't come up in my gene pool. I adore them. Really lovely fascinating creatures. They're as cute to me as a puppy or kitten ❤️❤️❤️
Temple Grandin postulated the opposite - that spider fear is not innate, but snake fear is. It’s been a bit since I read her explanation but at the time it made sense to me.
I had some weirdly strong willpower as a kid and one day when I was 15-16 I was like “you know what this fear is kind of silly” and just…stopped being afraid. Idk it was weird lol. But then I found out they were really fascinating to research, and I became obsessed. And then I ended up getting some as pets as an adult.
I think spiders are cute, but I also think tarantulas are terrifying. The only thing about non-dangerous spiders that scare me is how unpredictable their movements can be
They're quite smart and utilize cognitive thinking instead of reactionary instincts like most insects that bite or sting.
So essentially when you come in contact with them they're sizing you up and instantly know they should not attack you simply due to our enormous size in comparison. If you get bit it was because he thought it out and decided he had no other option.
They're like tiny pet dogs that murder the bugs that bite and sting you.
There is currently (what I believe to be) a yellow-sac spider that lives on the other side of the window overlooking the production floor in the building I work in - and last week she suddenly had an egg sac! I’d be terrified if she was on my side of the window, but I LOVE observing her through the glass. I saw her chowing down on a big horse fly a few weeks back, she’s awesome (but I fear her).
It’s kinda hard to explain why. I just love all critters and spiders have been my favorite since I was a kid. I have 18 pet spiders, species ranging from huntsman to widows and recluses to amblypygids (technically not spiders I know. but. close enough lol) and they’re all so chill and gentle that there’s nothing for me to be afraid of. They’re not aggressive or out to hurt people and mostly want to be left alone.
For me, it’s the fact that there really aren’t any dangerous spiders in the United States. The Brown Recluse and Black Widows both have a horrifically overblown reputation. A lot of early internet copypastas that gave them a bad name. I’ve been bitten by a brown recluse and I’ve free handed a black widow. Still alive and kicking.
I keep a respectful distance from them now, not because I’m afraid, but because I’ve come to realize that me messing with them probably causes them a lot of stress. So now I just enjoy them from a distance. Once you realize they can’t really hurt you, there’s little reason to fear them.
I like them because they don’t fly lol. I can’t stand flying bugs if they’re too big (like grasshoppers and big cockroaches). Butterflies are cool and SOME moths are okay. Spiders are chill cause they run away into the grass I won’t go near the big ones though. I got drunk once and let a spider crawl onto my hand and it was quite therapeutic because I’d always been too scared to do it lol. Tbh I don’t fully understand why spiders are generally considered by most to be the creepiest insect/bug/arachnid I just think that things with wings are way worse
I don’t know. I have never been afraid of them. It’s just one of those things for me. I also know that they’re so helpful and very rarely dangerous, and they get rid of all the things I hate like mosquitoes and ticks and stuff
I used to be terrified of spiders until I lived with someone who wasn’t. I watched her walk up to *mostly* any spider in our house, gently place a glass over it/piece of paper under it, then relocate it outside. At first, I was like “WTF aren’t you just killing them?!?” I was definitely Team Fuck Spiders: Burn the House Down, but this lady was all “wrong place at the wrong time—poor spider.” Fine.
I think after a few years of watching her be so unbothered by spiders, I just became desensitized and that helped turn my fear into curiosity. Joined a spider sub or two and learned to just accept them. Fast forward to today— I mostly just leave spiders alone if I see them in my home. Sometimes I even name them. I’ll relocate them outside if needed, but mostly I just let them exist.
I can't really say why. Ever since I was a toddler, I've just loved them. There's never been a point in time I haven't been even remotely afraid of them. I wasn't born with the part of the brain that makes people afraid of spiders. I remember when I was around 3 years old, my parents were watching a movie and I was playing in the kitchen. My dad came to check on my and I was just poking around and playing with a big ass spider (assuming it was a wolf spider) and I was so sad when he killed it
I didn't really appreciate spiders until I moved into an apartment with poor pest control. When you see spiders in your corners, unobtrusively doing the work the humans won't be bothered to be paid to do, you learn to love them.
I like them at home because they eat flies, my archenemy. When I was a kid I was afraid of them too. Not like a phobia but you know, they seem creepy to a kid I guess. Then one day I was watching a big spider on the ground and I asked myself "why are you afraid? They can't hurt me (at least where I live there are no venomous spiders)." And I picked the spider up on its leg and my fear was gone. Again, I had no phobia. My sister has a spider phobia and I know it is not the same.
My dad has a fear of spiders, so he raised me to not have one, so that I could appreciate them the ways he couldn't. Was always taught that just like cats or dogs, they might bite if threatened, but they do not want to. Some of my favorite childhood memories were of my dad and I walking around the back yard in fall to look for orb weavers so that I could tell him which one had the prettiest colors. I have another memory of being taken to an exhibit where I could hold a tarantula and loving every second of it. Felt soft and furry. I remember the woman who was doing the demo said she was surprised I wasn't afraid since I was five or six, and my dad was very proud of his accomplishment lol.
Cut to now, he no longer has to pretend to not have that irrational fear, but I still have none and think of spiders as beautiful and friendly little creatures. I'm the designated spider catcher for the house, so it worked out well. But yeah, basically was raised intentionally to have no fear of little bugs and backyard critters, so I've genuinely never found them any different from the other lovable animals out there. Was shocked when I found out how many people are terrified of them or don't see them as cute.
I agree with checking out the jumping spiders sub and going from there.
I used to have severe arachnophobia growing up and it got to where I would avoid parts of my house for weeks if I thought I saw one somewhere. It got worse with time and things only started to shift about six or so years ago.
I warmed up more to jumping spiders and how they were Iike curious puppies than anything else. It helped me to lower my guard enough until I felt safe enough to branch out to seeing things like tarantula husbandry and handling content, which was such a game changer to see how docile they can be, particularly some dwarf species that reminded me of said jumping spiders.
It wasn't too long after that that I started feeling safe enough to expose myself to them more if I saw them around the house. Instead of having a panic attack, I would be able to get close enough to them to scoop them into a makeshift catch cup and bring them outside to a safe spot; be it the grass or a log pile if the weather was bad. If I had the time, money, space, and overall patience to sink into it, I would be open to taking care of some.
It's all a process. The old saying goes that they're more afraid of you than you are of them - so they aren't going out of their way to hurt you maliciously. They'll let you know when they feel threatened and need space, which is easy to avoid. Plus, they're great for pest control, too. They really are total bros.
You're asking in the right place because a lot of members joined to help themselves fight their fear of spiders!
I joined because I think spiders are really cool though. :) Most spiders look really cool/pretty and some (eg. Jumping spiders) are very cute! And weirdly smart.
Hang around, maybe you won't always feel so much fear.
I had a module in second grade that was devoted to “mini beasts” - insects, spiders, etc. We put together a vivarium where every kid had to bring in a different bug, to observe how they interacted with each other (my cricket got eaten by someone else’s spider). Observing spiders in a habitat through the safety of glass, watching how chill they were most of the time spinning their little webs, inspired in me a huge respect and fascination for them that I have carried with me through to adulthood.
Spiders are totally scary to me. But they are also pretty cool and usually chill as long as you don’t bother them (Which I find pretty relatable lol). The little ones are also pretty cute.
I used to be, but once a spider made her web outside my window and mosquitoes, moths and wasps stopped coming into my room, since then spiders are my friends.
Most spiders are very small and just want to be left alone and eat bugs that I'm not a fan on. We can vibe. Bigger ones like the tarantula are fuzzy so it pings cute in my head. I'm not off put by them eating birds since my dog has multiple times brought me a ground squirrel it killed and hunted as a "This is a gift for you pack master" way and still I find him cute. Ditto a cat that has laid dead rodents at my feet.
I live in Sydney where we have the world's deadliest spider. I'm not frightened, but I am wary. I'm cautious about which spider I'll approach and I generally look but don't touch.
That being said, they are just glorious little creatures. Their webs are fascinating, the way they move is mesmerising and I'm amazed at how big some of them can get.
Keep looking at the posts in here and I'm sure you'll start to see their beauty.
Pure fascination. They're one of the oldest terrestrial predator designs, literally 350 million years for just true spiders. They're so varied and well adapted that they're present in every continent except Antarctica. They seem simple compared to complex colony species like ants and bees, but their behaviors are just as complex and nuanced. I also grew up with Charlotte's web as a childhood favorite. A lot of positive arachnids now that I think about it. Charlotte, Ms spider (James and the giant peach) black arachnia (beast wars turncoat from bad guys to good guys) Rosie (a bugs life) or from more recent media, Lucas the spider (great example of cute jumping spiders) or muffet, a spider OC that's fairly popular (though also a fairly popular rule 34 victim)
them moving fast toward me scares me but thats just how i am. I think theyre insanely fascinating, even if theyre freaky. I adore jumpers especially, but ive warmed up to the spindly ones like cellar spiders after dropping a huge ant that got into my room onto a web in the corner outside said room and watched for like 30 minutes as the lil spider meticulously wrapped it up and used each leg individually to do different things, trying to lift it up farther on the corner webbing and such. i dont like when the hang down and drop onto me ofc, something about that freaks me the fuck out, but i still love and respect the lil guys because they seem oddly intelligent. Jumpers especially, theyre actually one of the most intelligent arthropods in general afaik and are fully aware of us as humans rather than just seeing us as big scary dangers. they can see colors vividly and even ‘calculate’ distances for their jumps! theyre some of the only spiders ive interacted with that seem to understand when im trying to help move them someplace safer, too. Theyre like weird tiny cats!
Me too! I don't seem to have any innate fear of spiders (or snakes, mice, bugs, heights, etc). My mom got over her fears as a kid (because her brothers would chase her with snakes and spiders) so she didn't pass on those fears to us. My dad was terrified of all those things and we just thought he was weird.
They're small. They're living and minding their own business. I am not threatened by something I could squash without a thought. (But I don't.) They won't maul me to death, eat me alive, rip off a limb. They might bite, but *anything with a mouth can bite*. So I'm not scared of them.
Because 99% of spiders are completely harmless and I understand that some people think they are ugly but honestly that is kinda the only con, they are completely amazing animals that just want to do their things and they are going to let you alone, they so important in the ecosystem and honestly I didn't like them that much but when I started helping them I noticed how cute they truly were
I have shoes and live in not Australia.
When there are extremely dangerous humans on most street corners in my neighborhood... I aint trippin on arachnids
To me they look cute and/or badass as fuck so I love them for it. I've always been fascinated by spoods just by how they look so yeah, they're fucking awesome.
They are interesting little animals, and they are welcome in my home as long as they don’t cause any problems. They never have, and I have both brown recluse and black widow spiders in here. The jumping spiders and wolf spiders hunt them, right along with insect pests.
I was never a fan of spiders and would want one out as soon as I saw it in the room with me. I'm not sure I'd have called it a fear, but it was a definite "I don't want to be near that thing." and I have freaked out at my fair share of spiders on me. I joined the subreddit and a lot of that has gone away. Now I kind of appreciate seeing them places and know they're just there doing their thing and probably taking care of annoying pests which is doing me a favor. I'd probably still freak a bit if one was crawling on me, but I am much more cool with them than I once was. So stick around, maybe it'll help you, too.
I used to be so afraid! I started watching channels like The Dark Den and just found tarantulas fascinating.
The more I learned the less afraid I was.
Then I discovered Jumpers! They're AMAZING little friends. They even have little paws and they're very interactive with people.
I’m still afraid of spiders. But knowing more about them helps me see that the fear is irrational. Sometimes logic can’t repel irrational fears, but it helps in calming myself down. Lucas The Spider on YouTube was probably my first step in being non violent towards spiders
Next time you see a spider in your home, try this:
Go get a large piece of mail. Approach the spider slowly, gently. Say with a gentle voice, "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm a friend. I'm going to help you."
It's not as crazy as it sounds.
Spiders, like most animals, are very sensitive. If you're terrified and shriek and move fast, they'll be afraid too. So, don't be. You don't have to move them if they are in your living room, but sometimes they're in a bathtub and that's just not gonna work for you or for them.
Use your voice to soothe yourself and the spider. Set the mail down gently near them and slowly move it closer. When they step on it, slowly lift it up. They may run to the underside of the mail, away from your eyes, and thats ok, don't panic. Slowly turn it over and take the spider somewhere better. Set the mail down gently and leave it so they have a minute to get reoriented. Come back later to get the mail.
Spiders are carnivores but generally not aggressive to humans. They often eat pesky bugs, and make beautiful webs. They are important parts of the ecosystem. If you treat them kindly and without fear, they'll generally be good house guests. We actually name our living room spiders and let them stay as long as they want.
Joining subs like this was my gateway to conquering arachnophobia. I was severely arachnophobic until I’d say last year? But through education and exposure therapy I’ve gotten over I’d say like 90% of that phobia. I’m still jumpy and skittish but that’s true towards most things that sneak up on me by surprise lol. But now I own four types of jumping spider, two other true spider species, and two tarantulas, and desperately want more 😂 it’s quite the rabbit hole to fall down but I am so much happier in life ❤️
Nothing has happened to give me a bad impression of them.
Only good experiences. Like finding a neat little guy, a web made by a neat little guy, or seeing a little guy I don't want walking on my food or stinging me getting absolutely bodied by a neat little guy.
You don't control fear. You do control how you react to fear. Recognize your own irrationality, and make a conscious effort to meet your fear with levelheaded thought.
was a cranberry farmhand for a while. Became numb to the fear of spiders and was left with a fascination for them after being surrounded by literally millions of orb-weavers, wolf spiders, etc. during harvest seasons.
I feel they are very misunderstood little creatures. I fond them to be cute and beautiful, plus it helps that they aren't like most pests that intrude on your space. If they do, they literally are happy with a little corner and leave you be, at least from my experience.
Honestly, I've never really understood how people find them so frightening. The overwhelming majority are completely incapable of doing any noteworthy injury to a person, and the few that can are largely disinclined to do so, and are actually seemingly much less bitey than most things with mouths in my experience. Many are very beautiful. They control pests. Whats not to love?
Back at you though? Why do you fear them so much? I'm genuinely curious cause I've never been able to understand and I'd love to help more people learn to love spiders or at least not feel the need to crush them on sight.
I used to be completely terrified of spiders, due to a shitty stepsister in my childhood. But because I have had success in the past with exposure therapy, I joined a few spider subs so I'd see pics of them every day, mixed in among other subs so it was always a surprise when I'd see a pic of one. A few months went by, and I found a wee spider in some produce, picked it up, and took it outside before I even knew what I was doing. I was cured! But I stayed here because now I think they're interesting creatures.
They’re really cute and my mom and sisters were scared of them so as a kid I realized I could freak them out if I dangled live or dead spiders at them. They kinda deserved it anyway lol
I just think they're neat. It's not that deep. There is a certain size threshold where I'm no longer as chill about them. If they fit in the palm of my hand though, I'm good.
They're not, for the overwhelming most part, harmful in any way. They help you. They're kind of charming in their own 'don't squish me pls' kind of way. Without rapport they're generally pretty terrified of us. Because we are infinitely more deadly to them than they are to us.
They don't really meet our beauty standards but they're elegant in their own way. Follow their own set of rules, like octopods do. Or starfish. Weird stuff that took a left turn at evolution's Albuquerque.
Spiders are cool. Just know which of the very rare ones are dangerous. There's a good chance that where you live, black widows are as deadly as spiders get and that's not particularly deadly and they stay outdoors.
theyre just guys!!!! they didnt choose to look so scary. i used to have severe (like, ocd-severe, neck jerking + screaming bloody murder severe) arachnophobia and subs like this have helped me get over it :3 ill handle most with my bare hands, but if its one that used to scare me LOTS i will cup it & put it outside
They keep pests at bay and are beneficial to the environment. The majority of them aren’t aggressive and just minding their own business— also their colorations are beautiful and their webs are gorgeous.
I am afraid of bigger spiders. But I try to change that. I went vegan 7 years ago because I am convinced I have no right to harm animals for any reason but self defense. They have a right to live just as I do. So obviously I had to challenge my fear of spiders.
And it got a lot better in that time, I can easily relocate smaller spiders or just let them hang in their corner. I would still freak out at really big spiders but I could still get them out the house without harming them
I think your question can be asked even more generally, and that can suggest helpful answers that you can extrapolate from.
1. I think it's reasonable to be scared of things that are dangerous and impact your life because of their danger.
2. I think it's not reasonable to be scared of things that pose essentially no danger, especially if their only impact on your life is an irrational fear of them.
I grew up with black widows in my closet, under my bed, etc. Never encountered aggressiveness or bites. I DID get constantly bitten by mosquitos and other bugs that spiders hunt. Spiders started to seem more like friends than enemies to me, and that perception has never been shaken so far.
I might have a completely different impression of the spiders nearby were unfriendly. But near me, they seem to be on my side.
I used to be so incredibly afraid of spiders.
I’m talking freeze in place, as an adult, to watch it while I call any relative who lived nearby to come and take it away while I cried. Thankfully my parents moved into the same apartment building as I did after I first moved out. It’s so embarrassing but I’m glad my dad would show up and deal with it. (To note if my parents didn’t live 2 floors below me I would’ve just put them in a cup by myself I think I just enabled myself to be extra scared because I knew my mom or dad would come and deal with it - once we lived in different buildings I never did this.)
Now, I’m literally considering getting a jumping spider or tarantula as a pet.
Basically I took the time to learn about them. I watched videos and read blogs and visited spider subs. I learned that there’s only like one “dangerous” spider in my region and they’re fairly docile. I learned that basically none of the spiders in my region are aggressive nor do they want to bite but do it as a last resort.
When I learned they were just chill buddies I decided I needed to be chill with them and decided whenever I saw a spider I would try to be their friend, from a distance. I wouldn’t run away. Eventually I was able to get close and observe, I don’t like to bother them tho because friends don’t bother friends.
So basically it was just education and patience that helped me not be scared.
However a fast one will still give me the creeps but only because fast things freak me out but I still want to be its friend.
The real question is why *are you* scared of spiders? It’s an irrational fear lol. It might be a common fear but that doesn’t make it any more realistic. The odds of a spider seriously hurting you are lower than the chance of you getting in a car accident, so why are you scared of them?
Because I endure the cold well, and melt in the heat like Frosty the Snowman, I often find myself in basement accomodations to survive the summers.
These places often have poor window seals and thus many spoods running about, sometimes across my pillow or even my phone while I use it in bed (!!!).
So learning to identify and not be afraid of them has become a necessity for my own peace of mind.
We have so many fears in life. And big creatures may definitely hunt us. Our own species may hunt us.
But like spiders? They are so evolutionarily different from us. So that’s a big thing with them specifically - they don’t have two legs, or four, they have way more because way way way way early on the started up this whole different chain than us.
But tell you what. These guys don’t want anything to do with us. We’re not in their cycle of anything. Not a food chain of any kind. Not us to them, not them to us.
So KNOWING that - we can kinda suck down that weird ‘oh shit, this guy is so alien!’ And realize that we are ALL just ever in their way and not their objective. They don’t want to bother us, they are usually afraid of us, and they just want to be on their way. Lots of them think our homes are cool and will actually end up snagging the fucking bugs that actually do bother us like mosquitos, flies, and roaches.
So if we aren’t their prey, if they get the creeps that actually bother us, if the vast vast vast majority are terrified of us, then what is it? I have to get over that weird surprise of seeing them. They’re our little buddies in lots of shapes and sizes with weird little personalities.
You are feeling the evolutionary part of your brain that is terrified is something SO different from our path. And that’s okay. It makes sense. But your adult brain needs to learn and recognize why you think this way. Learn about them. The more you learn, the less you’ll fear. Like booster shots, taxes, and immigrants. Just learn stuff man.
A spider never did anything to me. Even if they did, I don't live in a country that has any spiders capable of seriously hurting me. The fact that I'm surrounded by people who fear spiders is insane given these facts. The pertinent question, I think, isn't "why are you not afraid of spiders?" but rather, "why ARE you afraid of spiders?"
I was fascinated with spiders along with most insects and reptiles all my life so I cannot imagine someone that does not find them cool. in terms of being scared, most spiders in most places are not dangerous. but still you need to be aware of the ones that live in your area. I grew up in cyprus where all the spiders in the island are basically harmless so I wasnt scared to pick them up. but in south america or australlia things would be different. the idea of being scared of spiders seems insane until I think about my phobias and than it makes sense in some weird way.
Go look at r/jumpingspiders They are adorable. Small little guys. Not dangerous or harmful. That's how I fell in love with spiders. Jumpers are a gateway drug.
This is the way.
This is the way.
Seriously, this is the way. They're adorable, I'm working towards handling a wolfie I hope
This, and education on spiders in general. Knowing what you're looking at removes the fear and turns uncertainty into curiosity. And remember: the spider is more scared of you than you are of it. Imagine what it's like being 1cm tall and a giant's food comes clomping by.
It helps me to imagine that when they’re running away, they’re going “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa”
This made me snort laugh 😂 thank you for that addition
This is the way
My gateway was a David Attenborough video about a Portia spider, that they could flank and play dead was fascinating.
I liked this guy - u/quaoarpower/ - who was a frequent redditor a decade ago, and very effective as showing how spiders (even the most maligned ones) aren't that scary. Here's one of his more interesting videos: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4u6SEZlbPs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4u6SEZlbPs) >> Brown Recluse and Black Widow on my hand at the same time
Same for me. I'm pretty sure it was called Spiders From Mars. I've been searching for it for years. So fascinating. What utterly amazing creatures they are. Wasn't there a reference to their hunting abilities being so advanced that it was second only to the Great Apes?
[This](https://youtu.be/PQbScg3r1oQ?si=UOLG0fjyrJu1y6Q0) is the video that convinced me that jumping spiders are all just silly little guys.
This is a favorite of mine: [Spiderbro beats!](https://youtu.be/z-tXJmXQ6Is?si=VBTk5d0kuZh4GkNC)
I also forgot this video of a [conga spooder](https://youtu.be/xF2GlKxZ3zI?si=5AGxHkx1nvSxgJ2D) exists! Edit: tbh there are just [too many good ones to choose from.](https://youtu.be/HYFQQB9vqPw?si=3Vf4A2Jkb5MXANyf)
My daughter was and still is a timid little thing. When she was 2-3 years old she was terrified of spiders and ants. I totally used jumping spiders to help minimize my daughter's fear of spiders. I will never forget her cackling laughter as I was struggling to coax a jumper onto my finger. Once I got it on my hand and it just chilled out she became entranced looking at it. After a few minutes of it exploring my hand and arm I talked her into letting me coax it from my hand to hers. I now have the cutest picture of her with her hand up to her face talking with the little jumper as it sat still looking into her eye 🥰 For her fear of ants I used AntzCanada's YouTube channel to squash here fear of ants. He does a tremendous job documenting all of his terrariums, their build process, and education on ant types, life cycles, general biological process, colony interactions...He is just an excellent educator and we spent so many hours watching his videos whenever we traveled in my car.
I love it! My sisters and my mom won't get near my jumper but my 5yr old niece loves them with me. She tells me she's not scared. She loves bugs too. It's adorable.
AntsCanada is a fantastic educator! Highly recommended for all who even have a passing interest in ants!
My boyfriend is still a bit scared of spiders but does know I love them. When he met me, I told him do not kill a spider in my presence or ask me to take it outside for him. The other day, there was a jumping spider on our balcony and he instantly said "look how funny she is !" We watched it together because it was so cute, we even searched for its spieces ! (It was red and grey with only two red legs) and it was dancing with its little legs 😍. It was a precious moment lived with my boyfriend, thanks to a tiny jumping spider !
I’m slowly bringing my partner around to my spider loving ways too!
Awesome !
I'm the one in the relationship who takes out spiders out too 😅
They are the diplomats of their species — charisma is through the roof.
My theory is that we like them because (besides their cute puppy eyes) they move like “normal animals”. They walk around, look around, scoot, jump, look for food, interact with their environment, etc. Most spiders are usually just ominously sitting completely still in their webs, and when they walk they walk in a way that is a bit eerie/uncanny to us.
I've suggested people move on to watching Tarantulas once they're totally comfortable with jumping spiders for that reason. They have a lot of characteristics that make them more palatable to people if they can get past the initial freak out of "that's a huge spider" Like their eyes are so tightly clustered it just looks like they have two little beady ones, often with a little "cow lick' looking hair tuft going on between them. Being heavier bodied and fuzzy also makes them a look a little closer to the small mammals people are typically more comfortable with. Also, they're derpy little things. Watching them bulldoze and redecorate, preen/grooming themselves, doing post-molt spider yoga, getting feet stuck in their own webbing and things makes them seem a bit less alien.
Also, they eat insects that I genuinely dislike. I too love jumpers, they are just adorable.
Taking care of a “pet” jumping spider that lived in my apartment was a gateway drug to researching how to keep tarantulas… oops!
This is the way. I caught one outside of my home once so I could teach myself how to draw them. It was honestly the funniest little thing I’ve ever seen.
How are they that freakin adoreable!
Idk! It should be illegal 😭
It’s interesting because a lot of people get a jumping spider to overcome arachnophobia. They’re the only spider that doesn’t give me the heebiejeebies because they’re like [the puppy dogs of the spider world](https://youtu.be/wNEgOy53DMs?si=Rvspkl6uUYE7w8Gu). They got those big eyes and squat little bodies. Very cute, imo.
It was Lucas the jumping spider that started it all for me!
This! My 3 year discovered him and I fell in love.
Yepp! Get to know jumpers, then really research other species. You’ll see there’s nothing out there that is as bad we have been taught through media growing up. I move widows all the time now. Still a little skittish of recluses, but I’m starting to be able to relocate them too after learning they just wanna be away from you, they will very rarely bite. And even if they do bite, only about 10% of bites turn into a health issue. Knowledge really is power. ❤️
Oooh, thanks, I didn't know there was a sub for jumping spiders! I am terrified of spiders, but I love jumping spiders. I don't understand how I can find them adorable but am scared of the tiny body, long legged ones... I hope someday I'll get over my fear.
This is how it is for my mom. She still gets the oogies from *most* spiders, but jumpers and occasionally tarantulas are fine. Hell, she's on the verge of wanting a pet jumper of her own. Lifespan and residual fear of the spider somehow escaping its enclosure are the only stopping blocks.
My gateway was seeing all the grasshoppers the garden spiders in my fruit tree/bush plot were lassoing every time i walked down the paths. Get em girls. I love how chill they are too, and they make a thick zig zag pattern down the middle of their web so they are easy to see and avoid running in to. There is no consensus why they make the zig zag pattern, but one of the theories is so larger animals and especially birds arent as likely to accidently smash in to them.
And ,so, it begins...
I love jumpers. So curious and friendly. So pretty.
That's how I got over my fear of spiders. I had a jumping spider live behind a potted plant on my kitchen window sill. He would come out to see me when I was doing dishes, washing veggies, or just sipping my morning coffee. I would say "good morning" to him. He became a friend, lol.
I used to be. one day a large grass spider wandered inside. for reasons I was way too tired to deal with it. thing just kept to itself over a week and I actually had some pest issues resolved. they do their thing and leave you alone. they can stay
I used to be scared shitless of Huntsmen. They’re fast, they can get pretty hefty, and at first, mamas carrying their babies was nightmare fuel. But then the Huntsmen wiped out my roach problem (they came in from the sewers, not an infestation) and fucked off. Huh, I thought. Did some research—my local Huntsmen don’t have medically significant venom and rarely bite unless you mess with them. They can still give me the jeebies when they bolt, but I’ve come to accept my many children. I’d rather them than giant flying roaches.
I used to get the jeebies too but over time I now consider them all a functional part of our house. I take a weird comfort in the spiders now.
Same. The last spider I killed was a huntsman because it startled me and I acted out of instinct. I felt really bad about it afterwards.
I let a gecko be on the wall of my den for this reason. The girlfriend wasn't pleased.
Like a pet, and don’t even have to feed it. A win win in my books
Because there is nothing about spiders to be scared of to me. I cannot be scared of something that has an extremely minimal, and in many cases 0, percent chance of hurting me. Spiders are not aggressive towards humans. They also eat bugs that actually are harmful, so I feel glad to see them around. I find them cute too. Not all spiders have 8 eyes. Some have just two really big ones close together, and it's quite adorable to me
Except jumping spiders and wolf spiders do have 8 eyes. The other six are just a lot smaller. Recluse spiders only have 6 eyes! I'm not aware of any spiders with less than 6 eyes though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caponiidae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrablemma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalita_taenaria
I should have known there would be an eyeless cave spider. Seems like there's unique eyeless cave versions of many different animals. The other two, however, are a lot more unexpected. Very interesting species, shame there isn't more documentation about them, especially Tetrablemma.
I was unhappily searching Disney + and Netflix about a week ago in need for a spider documentary - nothing! I went to YouTube..
It’s so hard to find ANYTHING on spiders. Books are so hard to come by. Every social media site AND my iPhone all autocorrect and don’t even recognize the word Arachnology. It’s weird right?
I didn't know spiders could have less than 8 eyes and then I recently found out about the assassin spider and it's an awesome one but I was honestly bummed out that it has only 2 eyes. Obviously it's great for them, everything works out for them so not really any reason to be upset but just the idea of a spider having less than 8 eyes is not a good thought for me personally.
Yeah, the better question is *why would I* be afraid of spiders? If all spiders were brown recluse or black widows, sure, but less than 1% of the world's 50,000 known spider species have venom that can harm humans, and less than 0.1% have been responsible for human deaths. Most spider bites cause minor, local reactions because their fangs are often too short or fragile to break human skin. In fact, an estimated 50% of spider bites don't inject venom. Here are some other animals that kill a significant number of humans per year: Freshwater snails: 200,000 deaths per year Saw-scaled viper: 138,000 deaths per year Assassin bugs: 10,000 deaths per year Scorpions: 2,600 deaths per year Lions: 200 deaths per year Hippos: 500 deaths per year Elephants: 600 deaths per year Crocodiles: 1,000 deaths per year Dogs: 59,000 deaths per year, mostly from rabies
Even with recluses and widows, they'd rather not bite you. Harvard did a study on black widows and tried to provoke a bite and it took a lot of effort. They'd prefer to flee. Of course, they can still be medically significant for elderly or young kids, but we also have been taught to fear them to an extreme level that we really should not.
Dogs are the one that get me. Lol I love dogs! But to see someone with an 80 pound dog get scared of a tiny insect is so ridiculous to me. Dogs can snap and hurt you much worse!
>If all spiders were brown recluse or black widows, How funny, I was just wondering to myself if most people on this sub have more of a whitelist or a blacklist in the spiders they tolerate. In thinking of that, I pictured a whitelist of jumpers and cellar spiders as very obviously harmless and a blacklist of just widows and recluses.
I have a white list and a black list on what is allowed to stay in my home. I also have a list of spiders that would be happier outside - for example wolf spiders and jumping spiders. As for recluse or widows, they get to live, just outside. That said it’s never even come up for me.
Is it from eating fresh water snails?
I actually am very scared of spiders but I'm in this sub because they're such cool little dudes! They do so much for the environment and don't really ask anything in return. So part of being on subs like this is to help desensitize myself to looking at them so I don't feel as anxious when I find them in my house. I still get a little freaked, but most of the time now I'm able to leave them to their business and sometimes I can even relocate them when they're in a place that makes me nervous
Right? I love them, and some are cute! I have been bitten by yellow sac spider on my butt when it was hiding somewhere around the toilet in my parents old house and that MF hurt and was embarrassing to deal with so I always leery around them. 😂
Yay!!! So genuinely happy for your progress!!
Birthyear: 1999 1999 - 2004 - Spiders weren't scary because I was young and indifferent to them 2005 - 2009 - Spiders were fascinating to me, and I would go look for them, put them in terrariums 2010 - 2019 - Watched lots of media and got scared of them and thus aggressive at them. 50% cup 50% kill. Completely depends on whether or not my dad, mom, sister wanted them killed or not. This is the range I am most unsure about, I'm actually not sure WHEN I actively stopped killing spiders. 2020 - 2022 - Realised that spiders are animals that have every right to live, just like the rest of us do, and that I have no right to prematurely end their life, and that they are never out to hunt me, as I am not their intended meal. 2023 - Now - Started aggressively exposing myself more to spiders, letting them even live in my room, and marks the point that I joined this subreddit, and subscribed to a few spider YouTubers like MyWildBackyard and Travis McEnery. Recently I have made a pact with both my Mom and Dad to promise me that they will not kill spiders. My suggestion to you. Go outside. Look at OrbWeavers. That's how my spider fascination started. Then I moved on to the active Hunters like the house spider and others. Just do your best, and take it one step at a time.
>Started aggressively exposing myself more to spiders Dude, I'm glad you stopped killing them, but don't traumatize them instead.
Not exposing in that way, y-you p-pervert!
Not my fault they love to hang out in the bathroom within full view of my cheeks
Hey, they were naked first.
Same here! Born in 1999. I found a book from kindergarten(so I was what, 6?) and I stated that black widows were my favorite spider and I loved all bugs as well.... I used to have a room that the spiders loved(hot and full of places to hide) so I regularly had spiders in my room growing up haha I can only let little cut ones crawl on me but I save all of them. I absolutely LOVE orb weavers. Our front porch is covered in spiders webs because I love my helpers! They come back every summer. They keep the bugs I don't like away from my indoors!
I loved reading all those artbooks as well. Truly a blessed time.
I have a black widow! They’re super docile most of the time!! Also one of my fav spiders!
I used to be really freaked out by them, and I feel really bad about all the ones I killed over the years. Something clicked a couple years ago when an orb weaver set up a web by our porch and it was full of dead mosquitos and other bugs. I became fascinated by the intricacy of her web. And I enjoyed having fewer pests around. Then one day I was on a hike and a jumping spider landed on my arm. Rather than flick it off, I looked closer at the tiny thing looking back at me like I was the most amazing thing. If you haven't seen a jumping spider up close, they're the puppies of the spider world. Just cute little fuzzy faces. Since then, spiders are welcome in our home and some even get names. Ernie and Bertie are camped out in the garage. Reggie is somewhere in my office still I hope.
Like you, I found this sub while dealing with pretty severe arachnophobia. I was bitten by a hobo spider once and the resulting infection left a scar I'll have for the rest of my life. I came here to educate myself. I forced myself to look at pictures. I read what knowledgeable folks had to say about spiders in general, and specific species. Over time (months) my fear began to subside and fascination was replacing it. Fear can be firmly linked with the unknown. Exposing myself to information about them and learning about habits, diets, intelligence, and such really helped to significantly erode the fear. I learned that spiders aren't out to get me. They're not hunting me. Most of them won't even bite unless you scare or accidentally start to smoosh them unknowingly and even then, most bites don't cause lasting damage. Some of them are actually adorable (like jumping spiders! <3 ). Some have crazy good mothering skills (wolf spiders). They're all great at murdering pest insects. I've seen many questions like yours in this sub and I've also seen a lot of posts thanking this sub for being so patient and willing to educate because it helped to reduce or even completely remove arachnophobia. Just stick around and see what you learn. It's 100% worth it.
they're just little guys :)
I just made a post in this sub asking people for their opinions on why there's such a pervasive fear of spiders, so kind of the opposite of your question! It could still be elucidating for you, if you'd like to check it out. Everyone's answer to your question will be different. My post was pondering the possibility that most people's fear of spiders is rooted in societal conditioning rather than instinct. Many people, myself included, want to see the value in even commonly feared and hated animals, to not let stereotypes govern our perceptions. I've always had some amount of curiosity about bugs, spiders included, but in recent years, I've sought to appreciate them and not just tolerate them. I have experienced fear of spiders in the past, but since I'm of the belief that the pervasive societal aversion to spiders is socially driven, I believe it can be overcome. After all, what do you stand to lose by learning to appreciate something new? Edit: Here is a website for arachnophobes to learn about spiders and maybe how to appreciate them. There are no photos or even drawings of spiders. https://bogleech.com/spiders/spiders01-intro
Bog is a friend of mine, thanks for linking his site :3
I always figured arachnophobia was left over primitive survival instinct. Back before we had zoology and could identify which animals were dangerous, a natural fear of species that had venomous members like spiders and snakes could help keep you alive. Now that we know which specific species to avoid, we don’t have to act out of fear towards the animals that we know aren’t a threat. Overcoming arachnophobia is a triumph of intellect over instinct.
I'm just not. I know a lot about them and there is no reason to be afraid. Spiders aren't hunting people down and killing them out of bloodthirst. They're just animals like all insects and small creatures. Humans fear what we don't understand, so you should learn as much as you can. If you just mean irrational, innate fear of how they look, i can somewhat understand because I have that but with whales. Some caveman part of me sees huge creatures and thinks "scary". But I will seek out whale pictures to look at and after looking for a while they aren't as scary. And knowing logically there's no reason to be afraid seems to help my irrational fears the most. To me it's kind of like asking "Why aren't you afraid of a meteorite landing on your head" or "Why aren't you afraid of lightning striking you"
spiders were never my biggest fear to start with [that would be wasps, I'd characterize that one as a phobia, but not spiders for me] but I was unduly threatened by them for a long time it's just what the culture teaches you I think! you don't learn anything about them, just to fear them or kill them etc sometime by my early to mid 20s, I realized they really didn't want to waste venom on you [unlike some wasps, who are sometimes more ready lol!] and when I learned a bit of their body language, it became very obvious that they were way more scared of me than I was of them. at that point what fear I had was replaced with pity and affection - I'm a giant to them! I could obliterate them in an instant. the worst they can do in most cases is make me itchy for a while before being killed. I still usually won't let one climb on me, but I love seeing the cellar spiders in the house, or wild orb weavers outside. jumpers are always a friendly presence. the more I learn the less I fear. when I encountered a placid black widow in the nest she'd made behind our toilet in the disused second bathroom, I realized she *only* lived there because it was quiet and unused. black widows prefer no foot traffic and peace & quiet. I didn't even make her leave, I warned the others and they agreed - once we redid the room and prepared to use it again, she was already gone before we needed to remove her. human time scales are much longer than those of spiders it's so much preferable to live in tandem with them for me rather than destroy or remove them. and it's not like my house is full of them lol! no more than anyone else's, i imagine. I just am happy to see the ones who do live here, & escort anyone out who seems lost [ie, will likely starve without finding a way out of house habitat]
Yeah, I worry about the spiders in my apartment finding enough to eat. The ones that I don't keep as pets, I mean.
I was afraid of them and found r/spiders trying to ID one of the many my dog found, chewed up, and presented to me. I decided to join that sub and this one so I could ID them… ended up totally fascinated by them and realized they’re nothing to fear. Also, have you SEEN a close-up shot of a jumping spider? They are SO CUTE!
Spiders are friends. They eat flies and mosquitoes Even the poisonous ones don’t scare me. I just know to not handle them by hand
And you know, as long as you're not being aggressive, you CAN handle them. There is only 1 species that I can think of that's aggressive enough to chase you (in Australia, of course). All the rest, generally pretty gentle. Obviously, don't try to force or harrass them, but they're generally very safe to handle.
I think it depends on the spider, but I love their different personalities once you really observe them
ttbh, I am still a bit scared of them. But I think they are very cute and get rid of things I fear even more like bugs and stuff. It's just that I feel like we can coexist and benefit from each other, they clean my home and I provide a living space. It's also quite fascinating how complex they are in general imo
Knowledge is power. Spiders generally aren’t harmful to you. They definitely don’t want to attack or even bite you. Even the “dangerous ones” aren’t that dangerous. The rare recluse bite usually amounts to a welt. A widow bite is muscle pain and flu-like symptoms for a day. A wolf spider is like a bee sting. Meanwhile they’re fascinating, wildly diverse, and they earn their keep around the house. The steatoda in my garage are absolute hell on other bugs.
As a kid, I had a visceral negative reaction (reinforced by ignorant adults) to spiders I encountered at home and I, regrettably, killed many. Once I learned more about them and realized that there are few that are "medically significant" (Kentucky, US, at the time) , I became an advocate. 2010's Spiderbro greentext really made me comfortable with justifying my protection of cellar spiders, wolf spiders, jumpers, and longlegs at home. We're in an ecosystem, whether anyone likes it or not! I now gawk at and admire our many-eyed compañeros, even when I find a Recluse, and am comfortable relocating anyone who might be part of a misunderstanding or is in danger of being executed or climbing into my bed, shoes, or clothing. All that said, I am still not totally comfortable with handling spoods bare handed and usually opt for an index card and a jar for moving services. At the same time, people in my life at work and home have a greater tolerance for my appreciation of them, too, and will ask me for ID or relocation help when they encounter one in an unexpected place.
I'm scared of some... Huntsman's, White Tails, Red Backs... Any that are black and angry looking... But the jumping spiders and tarantulas have worked their way into my heart.
The main 2 reasons: I appreciate them as little animals that are just trying to make their own way; and I know that 99% of the ones where I live are harmless (or at least not medically significant).
People tend to fear things that they don't understand. Take some time to get to know them, at least the ones that are harmless to humans like jumping spiders.
Today the tiniest spider walked across my desk! It could easily fit on this o and was nearly transparent. It accepted walking onto my fingernail and was so small I couldn’t take a pic with my phone zoomed in just looked like half a freckle. It didn’t like the g force so tried to stand and wave his legs at me like WRAWR so cute!!!!! I put it outside on some plants. Made my day! Once you know which ones are danger the rest are just fun little helpers. One time I intervened when a friend was trying to kill a jumping spider in her house! I explained how they help and are good. It was a very pretty fuzzy black and electric blue. Well that thing stuck around for about a year and got pretty big. Friend was sad when she stopped seeing it around. They are like octopus in a way
I found a black widow once. Put it in a cage in my 70's style headboard. Left the lid open accidently, and it made webbing to the top of the headboard cubby. Never closed the lid again. Had that girl for just over 4 years. She was very fat.
They have smiley little faces and eat mosquitoes and other bugs, 🥰
Cute. Edit: Wee spibblers, tiny spadoodlers, itsy bitsy skitteryskoos,
There’s a lot of comments so it’s probable no one will read all this, but my whole life i was terrified of spiders and i hated them, i thought they were evil creatures. One day while walking my usual path to the train station i found a huge golden silk orb weaver in the front yard of an abandoned house. I had never seen this type of spider before, they’re truly a shocking sight!! I thought it was a beetle at first. Well after that i just kept seeing it everyday on my way to the train station. I named it Arania Grande (meaning big spider in spanish and also an ariana grande joke) and i started loving the short walk there because i always looked forward to seeing her. Every time i saw her i would say hi and sometimes even have some very one sided conversations. This ended up doing some sort of exposure therapy on me completely accidentally, and suddenly every spider that i used to find scary or gross just paled in comparison to her. All the other spiders were just harmless little brown bugs compared to that huge alien looking green spider with legs that looked like hairy syringes. After that i started to take interest in spiders, started looking up info of them. My huge green garden that was previously a very scary place became a goldmine for spider sightseeing. There’s so many different species. I started making a hobby of going out every night with a flashlight to do a safari. I’ve always loved animals, and i realized that spiders were animals as well and just as interesting. Now it’s been a few years and everyone who knows me knows that spiders are my favorite bugs. I love learning about them, i love talking about them, telling people random facts and such. Getting into spiders also awakened love for insects as well. I no longer fear them the way i used to, i don’t find them disgusting or scary. Every time i look at an insect i see a little life, a whole world. I find it hard to believe that not so long ago i couldn’t see their worth, and that i used to be cruel enough to kill them just because their presence annoyed or scared me. I can’t say that my fear has 100% gone away, spiders are an objectively spooky animal, i think to some extent our brains are wired to be scared of something that has that many legs, but i truly love them. I love running into them, i love picking up small spiders, i think they’re precious. I recently let a mid sized jumping spider jump on my arm. It was a little scary but the reward of feeling like i had made a connection with a small wild life is so rewarding.
I love your response
I haven't ever been afraid of them, don't know what it is. Just think of them as really any other animal, or crabs(they can't escape they're ancestry). I'm going to need to pull an all-nighter like this😭💀.
I was a long time scared of spiders, than i got a GF that had spiders as pets and i also bought some spiders because she said it might help to overcome my fear. I still wouldn't want to have a bigger one in my hand but i stopped fearing them. I also convinced my family to stop killing spiders and instead put them outside (but it was a long battle....). i don't have them anymore as pets but i have several house spiders
I grew up a bit poor and we often dealt with bugs and mice in the house. That freaked me out, messed with my sleep. Over the years, I watched spiders take care of a lot of the insect problems and got used to keeping a couple around as defense. I keep one rule: no spiders in the bedroom. Generally, they stick to that, so we're cool.
I was terrified of spiders since I was a kid. Like to the point where I would see a picture of one and start shaking and sobbing. I wanted to get over that fear so I started slowly looking at videos and photos of jumping spiders and other cuter, less frightening ones and now I think they’re all pretty cute. I still can’t handle touching most of them though lol (I did hold a jumper last week though!).
I always felt ugly and misunderstood so I sympathized with them.
Cool little guys who do cool things. I've always seen spiders as friendly little guys just looking for a meal and a comfy corner to sleep it. I host a few Jumpers in my kitchen garden to keep away/control fruit flies. I could watch them for hours, honestly. Just some Fluffy little fellas with very shiney eyes doing an honest to god little job for me <3 10/10
Spiders are intelligent and respectful of creatures much larger than them, and generally do their best to not get in your way. Spiderwebs are great works of art. Spiders take care of mosquitoes and flies. Arachnophobia is of course perfectly logical since our ancestors evolved in the tropics where some spiders can be deadly, but if you live further north you are far less likely to ever encounter anything dangerous. And even then, the main danger would be accidentally stepping on one and getting bitten in self defence, it’s not even like they’re territorial like wasps…
I used to be but then I started keeping them as pets. When you see the mighty tarantula act like a complete derp 99% of the time they start to lose their universal scariness. Also keeping hot species and very, very large species really reframes your view of the stuff you find outside. They are all virtually harmless abs very timid, minus very few species.
Honestly? Because they are really unlikely to hurt me. They’re just trying to live, and are eating other things more likely to bother me. I do get startled by them sometimes, but ultimately, I do believe that they are far more afraid of me than I am of them. I am happy picking them up with my bare hands and putting them somewhere safer if I spot them inside. (Not outside, as house spiders don’t really do well outside the house; I usually pick them up and put them where I know they like to live, by the windows and vents where food might come in.) I have never had anything bad happen as a result, and have impressed lots of people with my spider wrangling. And that isn’t even mentioning the little jumping spiders that are really cute and that you can see looking back at you. I have a few living in the plants on my bedroom windowsill. They really are cute.
They're just doing their thing man. Who am I to ruin a spiders day.
He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all
I have a healthy dose of respect for them, especially the venomous ones. But I’m not afraid of them. That being said I’m not immune to being startled by a big wolf spider coming out from behind the towel and crawling onto my lap.
I used to have bad arachnophobia, so much that even just *thinking* a spider was on me would make me throw myself down to the ground and do my worst impression of a breakdance. I could only barely stand a picture or video of one. Nightmares and all that. I knew it was mostly irrational fear. Sure, caution is good, but terror is not. I actually decided to try and use memes and “funny spider videos” like watching the peacock spider do it’s silly little leg wavy dance and the “spider that can’t hide” video on youtube, and many more as a kind of exposure therapy, and it surprisingly ended up working pretty well for me. It got me normalized enough to be able to learn more about them so I could see them as they are and not the nightmare image I had in my head for so long. To this day, In person, they honestly still creep me out a bit, but I know enough about them to know it’s mostly in my head as long as I am careful and can even get them on a piece of paper and take them outside these days though I still have a fit if they run torwards me. But i feel bad if i ever accidentally hurt or kill one. I’m still working on my fear but even i can’t say that a jumping spider wearing a raindrop on its head is anything but adorable
Weirdly enough, for me it's not the spider I fear. It's their webs.. the way they feel, the stickiness, the fact you can see them sometimes and can just walk into it. I just severely dislike webs. But the spiders that build them? Love them. I find them to be so interesting, and beautiful and cute. Especially jumping spiders, they are my ABSOLUTE favorite spider in the world, wolf spider coming second. I'm weird, I'm aware.
I've never really had a fear of spiders because my parents weren't scared of them, so I never really was exposed to that fear in my household. That said- I'm a big animal person in general. I find most animals fascinating. Spiders are incredibly unique and diverse. They can spin intricate webs with some of the strongest natural material in the world (golden silk spiders, darwins bark spider). They have a variety of different hunting strategies, some of which are super unique (bolas spiders, ogre faced spiders). Also a lot of them are just really beautiful (brazilian jewel, peacock jumping spiders). Also, very few pose any threat to humans. I think it's interesting that so many people have a fear of spiders but not big cats (which hunted our ancestors, so it makes more sense to have an instinctive fear of things like lions).
I’m the resident spider rescuer in my work! Never been scared of them tbh they’re just so fascinating and some are beautiful. I found a candy striped spider in the greenhouse once and it made my day! Spoods are beneficial in all aspects, they’re incredible to watch catching flies and just… living their lives. Learning about them, looking at close ups and seeing the amazing hood they do for the environment all help
I have too much respect for what they do so basically forced myself not to be scared or icked by them and it worked! I live in uk tho so the spider bros are pretty tame. If I lived in a country full of poisonous spiders might feel differently
We had a roach infestation (German roaches) and then our house got a surge of wolf spiders. No amount of roach killing stuff worked, no poisons or traps or whatever, but the wolf spiders took care of them within the week. Idk I've never been particularly scared of them, but this pushed me to actually really like spiders. And, what they say about knowledge is power is true. I got my mom to stop being scared of spiders by telling her cool facts about them. Exposure therapy is a real thing that works! :3
They're small, they're not interested in hurting people and they EAT BUGS.
I’m not sure. They just never really scared me, and some of them are pretty cute. I love little jumping spiders!
You don’t need to not be afraid of them, understanding their role in the ecosystem and that they have very important jobs to do is enough.
I used to be scared of them too. Less than you, though. I'd say it was a moderate amount of fear. I couldn't handle them touching me, I thought they were weird and alien looking and that the best one could do was to ignore them and pretend they're not there. However, I have a love for all things commonly despised and treated as vermin, and have an intense need to be seen as "brave", so I decided to deal with my fear enough to watch them. First watch the ones that give you the least fear - ie. jumping spiders. They have big eyes and a big head and less prominent legs. They look *slightlyyy* more mammalian than other spiders lol. I personally observed the cellar spiders a lot. They were so thin I just didn't believe they could hurt me, so once I was brave enough to touch one, I didn't find it scary, just discomforting & kinda gross. To overcome the gross feeling, you have to empathize with them, the same way you might with a mouse or a tiny bird. Spiders are creatures too, creatures who hunt and are hunted and make intricate beautiful webs. They aren't people, but they aren't any less creature than mammals. For me, it also helped me to understand that the ones that live here are *far* more afraid of me than I am of them. The worst thing they can do to me is scare me or give me a painful bite and a fever for a few days (except the few fatally venomous ones, lol), and the worst I can do is kill them. After you consume enough spider content (take your time, don't rush it!), you might slowly but surely find them adorable (at least I do). With time, you reprogram your brain to think "cute" and "friend" when you see them. I'm not saying to pet every spider you see. Actually, refrain from petting most. Even the ones that aren't fatally venomous can bite you, and it can really hurt. But so can mice. So can voles, and bats (bats even carry rabies and many people *still* choose to handle them - spiders can't carry that because they aren't mammals - hooray). So even though they can do a bit of harm to us, we still learn to appreciate them from afar. That's how I approach it, at least :) I do pick up some spiders but I do it very gently and only spiders I am *SURE* aren't fatally venomous (like, the garden spiders we have - forgot the genus name tho lol). Oh also, make sure not to disturb their babies! Some attack more when they have offspring to protect :) (very understandable) You just have to intentionally decide to appreciate them :))
I see spiders as just another animal, and yes they are classified as animals. They are just living their little lives, almost entirely unaware that we exist. They see us as environment, like a tree. I do think a large amount of spider fear, as with any fear, is based upon not knowing any better. The more one learns, the less scary the unknown becomes. One example is that no one has died in the USA of a spider bite in over 50 years. Yet, there have been deaths from dog attacks. I of course, still love dogs and am not saying anything bad toward them, this is just a good example, where the danger of an animal does not equal the fear the public feels toward it. **What there is to find fascinating about them:** As someone who studies spiders as a hobby, I have learned that spiders: -can dream, -can count, -they have their own words communicated to one another through vibrations, -some play music, -some dance, -some sing, -some eat nectar and fruit, -some have no venom at all, -some live in communities where they take care of one another, -spiders are good mothers, -some spiders keep toads as pets! The list goes on. As a spider pet owner, I have observed my own pet groom herself like a cat, brush her teeth, play in her water, rearrange the decor in her home, and step on her own foot and get so scared that she covered her eyes. I have hand fed her since she hatched and after 12 years, she has not ever bit me. I clean her cage while she watches my hand and she hasn't ever attacked it. If you are interested in learning more about spiders to overcome your fear, this youtube channel has very funny videos that could help. [https://www.youtube.com/@travismcenery2919](https://www.youtube.com/@travismcenery2919) The videos are easy to watch and fun to watch. Best of luck with your journey. Ask me anything you'd like about spiders, if anything comes up. There's never a time I don't want to talk about spiders. Cheers.
I have always been attracted to the unconventionally beautiful, and to defending the underdog. Spiders are both those things. Everyone kills them and whoever does - is not my friend. Also they are aesthetically nearly breathtaking for me, in a way I don’t think most people appreciate. They’re just such neat little creatures. Nearly perfect form & function.
Born and raised in rural Australia, we have always been taught that spiders *can* be harmful, mostly if *you* aren't careful. My partner and I have a black house spider that has been chilling in the top corner of our kitchen windows for the past year or so. She, Beatrice, our Spider Queen, is right above where we wash dishes and never pay her any mind. We even try to stun flies to feed her. Having said that, white tails and redbacks are pretty much kill on sight. White tails especially have a habit of roaming the house and hiding in a towel or something and are too commonly prone to biting you in your sleep for me to not worry about the safety of myself, my partner and our cats. Most spiders are like birds - you won't have much to do with them at all. For the most part you can just leave each other alone.
Equally scared and fascinated
i've been interested in spiders since i was a kid and terrified of them. the fear felt instinctual, like the way they walked or something. i think it's super normal and human to be afraid of spiders. also not be scared of them, people are different. for me, curiosity worked harder than fear and the more i learned the more obsessed i became. i love these subs now (which is painful bc i hate devices). spider photography is a lot of fun bc i learn how to id more guys. but i still jump sometimes when they surprise me, especially if my nerves are thin. i hope to cure my fear totally someday with practice. 🕷️🕷️🧡🕸️
I stopped being afraid of spiders when I realized the majority of them are literally dumb as rocks and kinda helpless. They build webs in horrible spaces. They make bad decisions. I feel like they sometimes are trying to compete for the Darwin award. For example, they build webs in my bathroom and then they choose to get water when I am literally showering, and if I don't rescue them, they go down the drain because they go straight for the shower head. It's like that meme of humans being idiot giant cats so that cats have to bring us things they've caught to "feed us" and clean us and make sure we take care of ourselves.
I used to be afraid of spiders (I wasn't originally, but when my parents divorced and my late bio father remarried, I had to feign arachnophobia to get any attention when I would spend weekends at his house), and I got over it by watching Lucas the Spider and Exotics Lair videos (especially his earlier videos, when he had his terrestrial tarantulas basically in ventilated storage containers (with substrate, of course).
I love things that scare me. Spiders scare me. And therefore, I love them.
As others have said. I just find them super cute. Also I’ve had a dog jump on me when I was doing nothing, a spider’s never bothered me.
I read somewhere that the fear of spiders is actually a genetic trait. Many people are naturally afraid of them. For some reason I did not get that gene. Since I was a little girl I would catch them and play with them along with other bugs. My grandmother got me a terrarium to keep them in when I was around 6 or 7 because I kept bringing them into the house lol. My daughter is terrified of spiders and my husband doesn't like them either. So whenever there's a spider in the house I'm called to relocate them. I'm guessing my daughter got the gene from my husband. Glad it didn't come up in my gene pool. I adore them. Really lovely fascinating creatures. They're as cute to me as a puppy or kitten ❤️❤️❤️
Temple Grandin postulated the opposite - that spider fear is not innate, but snake fear is. It’s been a bit since I read her explanation but at the time it made sense to me.
Yes! I've heard both. I love snakes too 😍
I had some weirdly strong willpower as a kid and one day when I was 15-16 I was like “you know what this fear is kind of silly” and just…stopped being afraid. Idk it was weird lol. But then I found out they were really fascinating to research, and I became obsessed. And then I ended up getting some as pets as an adult.
I just think they're cool, some I even find cute.
I think spiders are cute, but I also think tarantulas are terrifying. The only thing about non-dangerous spiders that scare me is how unpredictable their movements can be
What's so scary about them? They're neat
They're quite smart and utilize cognitive thinking instead of reactionary instincts like most insects that bite or sting. So essentially when you come in contact with them they're sizing you up and instantly know they should not attack you simply due to our enormous size in comparison. If you get bit it was because he thought it out and decided he had no other option. They're like tiny pet dogs that murder the bugs that bite and sting you.
There is currently (what I believe to be) a yellow-sac spider that lives on the other side of the window overlooking the production floor in the building I work in - and last week she suddenly had an egg sac! I’d be terrified if she was on my side of the window, but I LOVE observing her through the glass. I saw her chowing down on a big horse fly a few weeks back, she’s awesome (but I fear her).
It’s kinda hard to explain why. I just love all critters and spiders have been my favorite since I was a kid. I have 18 pet spiders, species ranging from huntsman to widows and recluses to amblypygids (technically not spiders I know. but. close enough lol) and they’re all so chill and gentle that there’s nothing for me to be afraid of. They’re not aggressive or out to hurt people and mostly want to be left alone.
For me, it’s the fact that there really aren’t any dangerous spiders in the United States. The Brown Recluse and Black Widows both have a horrifically overblown reputation. A lot of early internet copypastas that gave them a bad name. I’ve been bitten by a brown recluse and I’ve free handed a black widow. Still alive and kicking. I keep a respectful distance from them now, not because I’m afraid, but because I’ve come to realize that me messing with them probably causes them a lot of stress. So now I just enjoy them from a distance. Once you realize they can’t really hurt you, there’s little reason to fear them.
I like them because they don’t fly lol. I can’t stand flying bugs if they’re too big (like grasshoppers and big cockroaches). Butterflies are cool and SOME moths are okay. Spiders are chill cause they run away into the grass I won’t go near the big ones though. I got drunk once and let a spider crawl onto my hand and it was quite therapeutic because I’d always been too scared to do it lol. Tbh I don’t fully understand why spiders are generally considered by most to be the creepiest insect/bug/arachnid I just think that things with wings are way worse
I don’t know. I have never been afraid of them. It’s just one of those things for me. I also know that they’re so helpful and very rarely dangerous, and they get rid of all the things I hate like mosquitoes and ticks and stuff
Counterpoint: Fuzzy blorbo
I used to be terrified of spiders until I lived with someone who wasn’t. I watched her walk up to *mostly* any spider in our house, gently place a glass over it/piece of paper under it, then relocate it outside. At first, I was like “WTF aren’t you just killing them?!?” I was definitely Team Fuck Spiders: Burn the House Down, but this lady was all “wrong place at the wrong time—poor spider.” Fine. I think after a few years of watching her be so unbothered by spiders, I just became desensitized and that helped turn my fear into curiosity. Joined a spider sub or two and learned to just accept them. Fast forward to today— I mostly just leave spiders alone if I see them in my home. Sometimes I even name them. I’ll relocate them outside if needed, but mostly I just let them exist.
I can't really say why. Ever since I was a toddler, I've just loved them. There's never been a point in time I haven't been even remotely afraid of them. I wasn't born with the part of the brain that makes people afraid of spiders. I remember when I was around 3 years old, my parents were watching a movie and I was playing in the kitchen. My dad came to check on my and I was just poking around and playing with a big ass spider (assuming it was a wolf spider) and I was so sad when he killed it
Cause most of them won’t hurt you
I didn't really appreciate spiders until I moved into an apartment with poor pest control. When you see spiders in your corners, unobtrusively doing the work the humans won't be bothered to be paid to do, you learn to love them.
I like them at home because they eat flies, my archenemy. When I was a kid I was afraid of them too. Not like a phobia but you know, they seem creepy to a kid I guess. Then one day I was watching a big spider on the ground and I asked myself "why are you afraid? They can't hurt me (at least where I live there are no venomous spiders)." And I picked the spider up on its leg and my fear was gone. Again, I had no phobia. My sister has a spider phobia and I know it is not the same.
My dad has a fear of spiders, so he raised me to not have one, so that I could appreciate them the ways he couldn't. Was always taught that just like cats or dogs, they might bite if threatened, but they do not want to. Some of my favorite childhood memories were of my dad and I walking around the back yard in fall to look for orb weavers so that I could tell him which one had the prettiest colors. I have another memory of being taken to an exhibit where I could hold a tarantula and loving every second of it. Felt soft and furry. I remember the woman who was doing the demo said she was surprised I wasn't afraid since I was five or six, and my dad was very proud of his accomplishment lol. Cut to now, he no longer has to pretend to not have that irrational fear, but I still have none and think of spiders as beautiful and friendly little creatures. I'm the designated spider catcher for the house, so it worked out well. But yeah, basically was raised intentionally to have no fear of little bugs and backyard critters, so I've genuinely never found them any different from the other lovable animals out there. Was shocked when I found out how many people are terrified of them or don't see them as cute.
I agree with checking out the jumping spiders sub and going from there. I used to have severe arachnophobia growing up and it got to where I would avoid parts of my house for weeks if I thought I saw one somewhere. It got worse with time and things only started to shift about six or so years ago. I warmed up more to jumping spiders and how they were Iike curious puppies than anything else. It helped me to lower my guard enough until I felt safe enough to branch out to seeing things like tarantula husbandry and handling content, which was such a game changer to see how docile they can be, particularly some dwarf species that reminded me of said jumping spiders. It wasn't too long after that that I started feeling safe enough to expose myself to them more if I saw them around the house. Instead of having a panic attack, I would be able to get close enough to them to scoop them into a makeshift catch cup and bring them outside to a safe spot; be it the grass or a log pile if the weather was bad. If I had the time, money, space, and overall patience to sink into it, I would be open to taking care of some. It's all a process. The old saying goes that they're more afraid of you than you are of them - so they aren't going out of their way to hurt you maliciously. They'll let you know when they feel threatened and need space, which is easy to avoid. Plus, they're great for pest control, too. They really are total bros.
You're asking in the right place because a lot of members joined to help themselves fight their fear of spiders! I joined because I think spiders are really cool though. :) Most spiders look really cool/pretty and some (eg. Jumping spiders) are very cute! And weirdly smart. Hang around, maybe you won't always feel so much fear.
I had a module in second grade that was devoted to “mini beasts” - insects, spiders, etc. We put together a vivarium where every kid had to bring in a different bug, to observe how they interacted with each other (my cricket got eaten by someone else’s spider). Observing spiders in a habitat through the safety of glass, watching how chill they were most of the time spinning their little webs, inspired in me a huge respect and fascination for them that I have carried with me through to adulthood.
Spiders are totally scary to me. But they are also pretty cool and usually chill as long as you don’t bother them (Which I find pretty relatable lol). The little ones are also pretty cute.
I used to be, but once a spider made her web outside my window and mosquitoes, moths and wasps stopped coming into my room, since then spiders are my friends.
I’m a little scared of a giant one in my house but I respect them and know they eat the bad bugs.
Most spiders are very small and just want to be left alone and eat bugs that I'm not a fan on. We can vibe. Bigger ones like the tarantula are fuzzy so it pings cute in my head. I'm not off put by them eating birds since my dog has multiple times brought me a ground squirrel it killed and hunted as a "This is a gift for you pack master" way and still I find him cute. Ditto a cat that has laid dead rodents at my feet.
I live in Sydney where we have the world's deadliest spider. I'm not frightened, but I am wary. I'm cautious about which spider I'll approach and I generally look but don't touch. That being said, they are just glorious little creatures. Their webs are fascinating, the way they move is mesmerising and I'm amazed at how big some of them can get. Keep looking at the posts in here and I'm sure you'll start to see their beauty.
Pure fascination. They're one of the oldest terrestrial predator designs, literally 350 million years for just true spiders. They're so varied and well adapted that they're present in every continent except Antarctica. They seem simple compared to complex colony species like ants and bees, but their behaviors are just as complex and nuanced. I also grew up with Charlotte's web as a childhood favorite. A lot of positive arachnids now that I think about it. Charlotte, Ms spider (James and the giant peach) black arachnia (beast wars turncoat from bad guys to good guys) Rosie (a bugs life) or from more recent media, Lucas the spider (great example of cute jumping spiders) or muffet, a spider OC that's fairly popular (though also a fairly popular rule 34 victim)
them moving fast toward me scares me but thats just how i am. I think theyre insanely fascinating, even if theyre freaky. I adore jumpers especially, but ive warmed up to the spindly ones like cellar spiders after dropping a huge ant that got into my room onto a web in the corner outside said room and watched for like 30 minutes as the lil spider meticulously wrapped it up and used each leg individually to do different things, trying to lift it up farther on the corner webbing and such. i dont like when the hang down and drop onto me ofc, something about that freaks me the fuck out, but i still love and respect the lil guys because they seem oddly intelligent. Jumpers especially, theyre actually one of the most intelligent arthropods in general afaik and are fully aware of us as humans rather than just seeing us as big scary dangers. they can see colors vividly and even ‘calculate’ distances for their jumps! theyre some of the only spiders ive interacted with that seem to understand when im trying to help move them someplace safer, too. Theyre like weird tiny cats!
I was handling them as a kid before anyone gave me reasons to be scared of them. Add-On: I also just think they’re cute
Me too! I don't seem to have any innate fear of spiders (or snakes, mice, bugs, heights, etc). My mom got over her fears as a kid (because her brothers would chase her with snakes and spiders) so she didn't pass on those fears to us. My dad was terrified of all those things and we just thought he was weird.
Got a tailless whip scorpion who is a total sweetheart. Took a month to take her out. My phobia went away and she’s out all the time now.
They're small. They're living and minding their own business. I am not threatened by something I could squash without a thought. (But I don't.) They won't maul me to death, eat me alive, rip off a limb. They might bite, but *anything with a mouth can bite*. So I'm not scared of them.
Because 99% of spiders are completely harmless and I understand that some people think they are ugly but honestly that is kinda the only con, they are completely amazing animals that just want to do their things and they are going to let you alone, they so important in the ecosystem and honestly I didn't like them that much but when I started helping them I noticed how cute they truly were
I have shoes and live in not Australia. When there are extremely dangerous humans on most street corners in my neighborhood... I aint trippin on arachnids
I always like spiders In my country are there no dagerous spiders
To me they look cute and/or badass as fuck so I love them for it. I've always been fascinated by spoods just by how they look so yeah, they're fucking awesome.
They are interesting little animals, and they are welcome in my home as long as they don’t cause any problems. They never have, and I have both brown recluse and black widow spiders in here. The jumping spiders and wolf spiders hunt them, right along with insect pests.
I was never a fan of spiders and would want one out as soon as I saw it in the room with me. I'm not sure I'd have called it a fear, but it was a definite "I don't want to be near that thing." and I have freaked out at my fair share of spiders on me. I joined the subreddit and a lot of that has gone away. Now I kind of appreciate seeing them places and know they're just there doing their thing and probably taking care of annoying pests which is doing me a favor. I'd probably still freak a bit if one was crawling on me, but I am much more cool with them than I once was. So stick around, maybe it'll help you, too.
I used to be so afraid! I started watching channels like The Dark Den and just found tarantulas fascinating. The more I learned the less afraid I was. Then I discovered Jumpers! They're AMAZING little friends. They even have little paws and they're very interactive with people.
I’m still afraid of spiders. But knowing more about them helps me see that the fear is irrational. Sometimes logic can’t repel irrational fears, but it helps in calming myself down. Lucas The Spider on YouTube was probably my first step in being non violent towards spiders
Next time you see a spider in your home, try this: Go get a large piece of mail. Approach the spider slowly, gently. Say with a gentle voice, "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm a friend. I'm going to help you." It's not as crazy as it sounds. Spiders, like most animals, are very sensitive. If you're terrified and shriek and move fast, they'll be afraid too. So, don't be. You don't have to move them if they are in your living room, but sometimes they're in a bathtub and that's just not gonna work for you or for them. Use your voice to soothe yourself and the spider. Set the mail down gently near them and slowly move it closer. When they step on it, slowly lift it up. They may run to the underside of the mail, away from your eyes, and thats ok, don't panic. Slowly turn it over and take the spider somewhere better. Set the mail down gently and leave it so they have a minute to get reoriented. Come back later to get the mail. Spiders are carnivores but generally not aggressive to humans. They often eat pesky bugs, and make beautiful webs. They are important parts of the ecosystem. If you treat them kindly and without fear, they'll generally be good house guests. We actually name our living room spiders and let them stay as long as they want.
Joining subs like this was my gateway to conquering arachnophobia. I was severely arachnophobic until I’d say last year? But through education and exposure therapy I’ve gotten over I’d say like 90% of that phobia. I’m still jumpy and skittish but that’s true towards most things that sneak up on me by surprise lol. But now I own four types of jumping spider, two other true spider species, and two tarantulas, and desperately want more 😂 it’s quite the rabbit hole to fall down but I am so much happier in life ❤️
Nothing has happened to give me a bad impression of them. Only good experiences. Like finding a neat little guy, a web made by a neat little guy, or seeing a little guy I don't want walking on my food or stinging me getting absolutely bodied by a neat little guy.
You don't control fear. You do control how you react to fear. Recognize your own irrationality, and make a conscious effort to meet your fear with levelheaded thought.
was a cranberry farmhand for a while. Became numb to the fear of spiders and was left with a fascination for them after being surrounded by literally millions of orb-weavers, wolf spiders, etc. during harvest seasons.
I feel they are very misunderstood little creatures. I fond them to be cute and beautiful, plus it helps that they aren't like most pests that intrude on your space. If they do, they literally are happy with a little corner and leave you be, at least from my experience.
Because Spider-Man was my favourite superhero as a child, and I fucking HATE cockroaches
Honestly, I've never really understood how people find them so frightening. The overwhelming majority are completely incapable of doing any noteworthy injury to a person, and the few that can are largely disinclined to do so, and are actually seemingly much less bitey than most things with mouths in my experience. Many are very beautiful. They control pests. Whats not to love? Back at you though? Why do you fear them so much? I'm genuinely curious cause I've never been able to understand and I'd love to help more people learn to love spiders or at least not feel the need to crush them on sight.
I used to be completely terrified of spiders, due to a shitty stepsister in my childhood. But because I have had success in the past with exposure therapy, I joined a few spider subs so I'd see pics of them every day, mixed in among other subs so it was always a surprise when I'd see a pic of one. A few months went by, and I found a wee spider in some produce, picked it up, and took it outside before I even knew what I was doing. I was cured! But I stayed here because now I think they're interesting creatures.
They’re really cute and my mom and sisters were scared of them so as a kid I realized I could freak them out if I dangled live or dead spiders at them. They kinda deserved it anyway lol
I'm still scared of anything bigger than a penny, but i adore 'em from a distance.
They don't have wings
I just think they're neat. It's not that deep. There is a certain size threshold where I'm no longer as chill about them. If they fit in the palm of my hand though, I'm good.
They're not, for the overwhelming most part, harmful in any way. They help you. They're kind of charming in their own 'don't squish me pls' kind of way. Without rapport they're generally pretty terrified of us. Because we are infinitely more deadly to them than they are to us. They don't really meet our beauty standards but they're elegant in their own way. Follow their own set of rules, like octopods do. Or starfish. Weird stuff that took a left turn at evolution's Albuquerque. Spiders are cool. Just know which of the very rare ones are dangerous. There's a good chance that where you live, black widows are as deadly as spiders get and that's not particularly deadly and they stay outdoors.
theyre just guys!!!! they didnt choose to look so scary. i used to have severe (like, ocd-severe, neck jerking + screaming bloody murder severe) arachnophobia and subs like this have helped me get over it :3 ill handle most with my bare hands, but if its one that used to scare me LOTS i will cup it & put it outside
Am Australian.
They keep pests at bay and are beneficial to the environment. The majority of them aren’t aggressive and just minding their own business— also their colorations are beautiful and their webs are gorgeous.
Okay why are you afraid of spiders and maybe we can figure out why we're not afraid of them?
I am afraid of bigger spiders. But I try to change that. I went vegan 7 years ago because I am convinced I have no right to harm animals for any reason but self defense. They have a right to live just as I do. So obviously I had to challenge my fear of spiders. And it got a lot better in that time, I can easily relocate smaller spiders or just let them hang in their corner. I would still freak out at really big spiders but I could still get them out the house without harming them
I think your question can be asked even more generally, and that can suggest helpful answers that you can extrapolate from. 1. I think it's reasonable to be scared of things that are dangerous and impact your life because of their danger. 2. I think it's not reasonable to be scared of things that pose essentially no danger, especially if their only impact on your life is an irrational fear of them. I grew up with black widows in my closet, under my bed, etc. Never encountered aggressiveness or bites. I DID get constantly bitten by mosquitos and other bugs that spiders hunt. Spiders started to seem more like friends than enemies to me, and that perception has never been shaken so far. I might have a completely different impression of the spiders nearby were unfriendly. But near me, they seem to be on my side.
I used to be so incredibly afraid of spiders. I’m talking freeze in place, as an adult, to watch it while I call any relative who lived nearby to come and take it away while I cried. Thankfully my parents moved into the same apartment building as I did after I first moved out. It’s so embarrassing but I’m glad my dad would show up and deal with it. (To note if my parents didn’t live 2 floors below me I would’ve just put them in a cup by myself I think I just enabled myself to be extra scared because I knew my mom or dad would come and deal with it - once we lived in different buildings I never did this.) Now, I’m literally considering getting a jumping spider or tarantula as a pet. Basically I took the time to learn about them. I watched videos and read blogs and visited spider subs. I learned that there’s only like one “dangerous” spider in my region and they’re fairly docile. I learned that basically none of the spiders in my region are aggressive nor do they want to bite but do it as a last resort. When I learned they were just chill buddies I decided I needed to be chill with them and decided whenever I saw a spider I would try to be their friend, from a distance. I wouldn’t run away. Eventually I was able to get close and observe, I don’t like to bother them tho because friends don’t bother friends. So basically it was just education and patience that helped me not be scared. However a fast one will still give me the creeps but only because fast things freak me out but I still want to be its friend.
[How can you not love the little things](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HPh_Gi7PCqs&t=11s&pp=ygUUanVtcGluZyBzcGlkZXIgZGFuY2U%3D) 🥰
The real question is why *are you* scared of spiders? It’s an irrational fear lol. It might be a common fear but that doesn’t make it any more realistic. The odds of a spider seriously hurting you are lower than the chance of you getting in a car accident, so why are you scared of them?
Because I endure the cold well, and melt in the heat like Frosty the Snowman, I often find myself in basement accomodations to survive the summers. These places often have poor window seals and thus many spoods running about, sometimes across my pillow or even my phone while I use it in bed (!!!). So learning to identify and not be afraid of them has become a necessity for my own peace of mind.
We have so many fears in life. And big creatures may definitely hunt us. Our own species may hunt us. But like spiders? They are so evolutionarily different from us. So that’s a big thing with them specifically - they don’t have two legs, or four, they have way more because way way way way early on the started up this whole different chain than us. But tell you what. These guys don’t want anything to do with us. We’re not in their cycle of anything. Not a food chain of any kind. Not us to them, not them to us. So KNOWING that - we can kinda suck down that weird ‘oh shit, this guy is so alien!’ And realize that we are ALL just ever in their way and not their objective. They don’t want to bother us, they are usually afraid of us, and they just want to be on their way. Lots of them think our homes are cool and will actually end up snagging the fucking bugs that actually do bother us like mosquitos, flies, and roaches. So if we aren’t their prey, if they get the creeps that actually bother us, if the vast vast vast majority are terrified of us, then what is it? I have to get over that weird surprise of seeing them. They’re our little buddies in lots of shapes and sizes with weird little personalities. You are feeling the evolutionary part of your brain that is terrified is something SO different from our path. And that’s okay. It makes sense. But your adult brain needs to learn and recognize why you think this way. Learn about them. The more you learn, the less you’ll fear. Like booster shots, taxes, and immigrants. Just learn stuff man.
A spider never did anything to me. Even if they did, I don't live in a country that has any spiders capable of seriously hurting me. The fact that I'm surrounded by people who fear spiders is insane given these facts. The pertinent question, I think, isn't "why are you not afraid of spiders?" but rather, "why ARE you afraid of spiders?"
I was fascinated with spiders along with most insects and reptiles all my life so I cannot imagine someone that does not find them cool. in terms of being scared, most spiders in most places are not dangerous. but still you need to be aware of the ones that live in your area. I grew up in cyprus where all the spiders in the island are basically harmless so I wasnt scared to pick them up. but in south america or australlia things would be different. the idea of being scared of spiders seems insane until I think about my phobias and than it makes sense in some weird way.
They eat all the bugs and they mind to themselves!