Even spiders, it seems, have fallen victim to misinformation.
Media reports of people’s encounters with spiders tend to be full of falsehoods with a distinctly negative spin. An analysis of a decade of news articles from dozens of countries reveals that almost half of the reports contain errorsarachnologist Catherine Scott and colleagues report August 22 in current biology.
“The vast majority of content about spiders is about them being scary and hurting people,” says Scott, of McGill University in Montreal. In reality, they point out, “spiders almost never bite people.”
Of the approximately 50,000 known species of spiders, very few are dangerous. Instead, many spiders benefit us by eating insects like mosquitoes that are harmful to people. Even with the rare exceptions like brown recluse spiders and black widow spiders, bites are extremely rare, Scott says. Some bite stories blame spiders not occurring in the area, and others reported symptoms that do not match the symptoms of actual bites. “So many stories about spider bites did not include any evidence that a spider was involved,” they say.
To conduct the study, Scott and colleagues analyzed more than 5,000 online newspaper stories about humans and spiders from 2010 to 2020 in 81 countries. In addition to errors, the team determined that 43 percent of the stories were sensational, often using words like nasty killer, agony Y nightmare. International and national newspapers were more likely to sensationalize spiders than regional media. Stories that included a spider expert were less sensational, although there was no such effect by other experts, including doctors.
If people knew the truth about spiders, they might spend less time blaming them for bites and killing them with pesticides that are toxic to many other species, including humans, says Scott. Clearing up misinformation would also be good for spiders, especially the one in your house that doesn’t squash out of fear. Spiders in general benefit, the researchers conclude, because the news helps shape public opinion, which can influence decisions about wildlife conservation.
“Spiders are unique in that they seem to be really good at grabbing people’s attention,” says arachnologist Lisa Taylor of the University of Florida in Gainesville, who was not involved in the study. “If that attention is coupled with factual information about how fascinating they are, rather than sensational misinformation, then I think spiders are well poised to serve as little ambassadors for wildlife in general.”