Why do spiders, bats and other spooky creatures have a bad reputation?
Scorpions, roaches and all the other creepy creatures you can think of have quite an unpopular reputation for their perceived threats to humans.
In this photograph taken December 3, 2010 a swarm of fruit bats, or flying foxes, from Kalong Island located in Komodo National Park in Indonesia's East Nusa Tenggara province head south to nearby Flores island to feed. (Photo by ROMEO GACAD/AFP via Getty Images)
Scorpions, roaches and all the other creepy creatures you can think of have quite an unpopular reputation for their perceived threats to humans.
“Horror movies throughout history have depicted bats, spiders and snakes to be terrifying creepy crawlies,” said Franco Franchina, founder of Philadelphia-based ILLExotics, a retailer of exotic plants and captive-bred reptiles and amphibians.
“However, most species are truly harmless, and many are beneficial to the environment and humans,” Franchina told AccuWeather.
Though it may come as a surprise to those with ophiophobia or arachnophobia – fears of snakes and spiders or other arachnids, respectively – experts say that these creatures are more afraid of humans than we are of them.
“Anything that is foreign to us, we immediately jump to fear without necessarily doing much research,” Franchina said. “They serve a purpose in existence, and we need to work to reverse the public’s fear of them and preserve their environments.”
Bats’ bad reputation
Often depicted as bloodthirsty creatures in horror films, not all bats are vampires, according to BatWorld.org. There are only three species of vampire bats of the world’s more than 1,100 species.
They don’t tend to attack humans or suck our blood, preferring instead to get their meals from animals like deer and wild fowl. “Most cases [of vampire bats attacking humans] is from people getting too close and going too far into their environment,” Franchino said. “If you don’t mess with it, it shouldn’t mess with you.”
Why spiders are ‘scary’
Most people likely believe that arachnids are potentially dangerous. Dr. Lauren Esposito, who serves as the California Academy of Sciences assistant curator and Schlinger chair of arachnology, said the majority of arachnids in the United States are completely harmless.
“I think that there’s something at the base of the human psyche regarding the fear of arachnids,” Esposito said.
Two arachnids with a particularly negative reputation are the black widow and brown recluse spiders.
Brown recluse spiders live in fewer places than people think, according to Esposito, who noted that the species isn’t found in California.
“In fact, the brown recluse isn’t even deadly; they rarely bite people,” she explained. “When they do, rather than instantaneous death, they cause necrotic lesion, which is cell death – your cells die, leaving a pretty terrible-looking wound.”
Petya Bartosch handles a rain spider at the "Yebo Gogga" exhibition at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)
The cases of true brown recluse spiders are so unusual that it’s more legend than reality, according to Esposito.
“In the few cases where people are bitten [by these spiders], it might be because someone’s cleaning out their garage, sticks their hands behind a board that they haven’t touched for years and there’s a brown recluse that’s been happily munching away at all the pests in the garage,” she said.
Another commonly feared spider, the black widow, is potentially dangerous, widely distributed across the U.S. and prefers dark places where it won’t be disturbed.
“It doesn’t want to be around humans, and it certainly doesn’t attack humans intentionally,” Esposito said.
She added while a black widow spider bite can be concerning for young kids and those with compromised immune systems, healthy individuals will mostly experience abdominal pain and cramping that don’t require a doctor’s visit.
“You can probably just call your local poison control center; most likely, they’re going to tell you to take some Advil, try to relax and that it will wear off in 24 hours,” she said.
Benefits of ‘creepy’ creatures
Creatures like spiders, bats and scorpions, although feared, can benefit the environment because they feed on and control populations of flies and mosquitoes, according to Franchina.
“In doing so, they limit the spread of diseases associated with mosquitoes, flies and some roaches,” he said. “There are no real threatening diseases that come with spiders or scorpions, other than some being venomous, of course.”
Bats also feed on mosquitoes, helping to lower the transmission of mosquito-borne illnesses. The Australian jumping spider, for example, prefers to eat mosquitoes that have fed on human blood.
“Taking those mosquitoes out of the ecosystem in a preferential way actually decreases the potential for disease transmission, because we get diseases transmitted by mosquitoes that have already blood fed from an infected human and then blood feed from another uninfected human,” Esposito said. “They’re doing us a huge favor.”
Many of these insects play essential roles in the food chain, serving as food sources for animals including a variety of birds. “Without roaches and spiders, they’re not going to be in existence because they don’t have anything to feed on,” Franchino said.
All arachnids also benefit humans by feasting on insects that are potential pests on our crops and in our homes.
“In the absence of the huge number and diversity of spiders and scorpions, we’d see a major increase in all of the other creatures that we probably would much rather not have,” Esposito said.
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