{"id":5095,"date":"2023-10-31T20:31:09","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T01:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=5095"},"modified":"2023-10-31T20:31:12","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T01:31:12","slug":"is-it-true-that-you-sometimes-swallow-spiders-in-your-sleep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/10\/31\/is-it-true-that-you-sometimes-swallow-spiders-in-your-sleep\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it true that you sometimes swallow spiders in your sleep?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wellness\/2023\/10\/31\/swallow-8-spiders-sleep\/\">Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"QBG264LYH5FV7J5VQAQ4XKR64A\">The claim:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Humans sometimes swallow spiders (as many as eight per year) while we\u2019re sleeping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/newsletters\/well-being\/?method=SURL&amp;location=ART&amp;initiative=CTA?itid=lk_cta_ssinline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Live well every day with tips and guidance on food, fitness and mental health, delivered to your inbox every Thursday.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"UCJJC7TMARFUNBYQZEMRH7CXMY\">The science:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The thought of an eight-legged critter crawling across your pillow, climbing your face and creeping into your mouth while you sleep is the stuff of nightmares. As you ponder that image, consider this: For even one spider to end up in your mouth would require a series of unlikely events. Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Spiders want nothing to do with humans.&nbsp;<\/strong>The notion that a spider would come anywhere near a sleeping, snoring human is antithetical to spider behavior. There are thousands of species of spiders, but only a handful live in human homes. The vast majority of spiders that live indoors are small and relatively harmless, spinning webs. Some, such as wolf spiders, actively hunt insects, including mosquitoes, flies and even small cockroaches.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Your open, moist mouth isn\u2019t appealing to a spider.<\/strong>&nbsp;Spiders breathe oxygen and would be repelled by your mouth, which to them would seem like \u201ca warm, moist cave that is mostly carbon dioxide and water vapor,\u201d said&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/naturalhistory.si.edu\/staff\/floyd-shockley\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Floyd Shockley<\/a>, an entomologist and the collections manager at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Vibrations from any snoring also would scare them away, he said.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The odds are against it.&nbsp;<\/strong>Although it\u2019s theoretically possible a spider could accidentally end up in your mouth, it\u2019s highly unlikely.A spider would have to lose its grip while crawling across your bedroom ceiling at the precise moment it is positioned over your face and then fall squarely into your open mouth. \u201cYou\u2019ve got a better chance of winning the Powerball than having a spider fall in your mouth while you\u2019re sleeping,\u201d Shockley said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington Post The claim: Humans sometimes swallow spiders (as many as eight per year) while we\u2019re sleeping. Live well every day with tips and guidance on food, fitness and mental health, delivered to your inbox every Thursday. The science: The thought of an eight-legged critter crawling across your pillow, climbing your face and creeping into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coping-with-covid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5095"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5096,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5095\/revisions\/5096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}