People like to think of their dwellings as safely insulated from the outside world, but many types of spiders can be found inside. Some are accidentally trapped, while others are short-term visitors. Some species even enjoy the great indoors, where they happily live out their lives and make more spiders. <\/p>\n
These arachnids are usually secretive, and almost all you meet are neither aggressive nor dangerous. And they may be providing services like eating pests \u2013 some even eat other spiders.<\/p>\n
My colleagues and I conducted a visual survey of 50 North Carolina homes<\/a> to inventory just which arthropods live under our roofs. Every single house we visited was home to spiders. The most common species we encountered were cobweb spiders and cellar spiders.<\/p>\n Both build webs where they lie in wait for prey to get caught. Cellar spiders sometimes leave their webs to hunt other spiders on their turf, mimicking prey to catch their cousins for dinner.<\/p>\n Although they are generalist predators, apt to eat anything they can catch, spiders regularly capture nuisance pests and even disease-carrying insects \u2013 for example, mosquitoes. There\u2019s even a species of jumping spider that prefers to eat blood-filled mosquitoes in African homes. So killing a spider doesn\u2019t just cost the arachnid its life, it may take an important predator out of your home.<\/p>\n It\u2019s natural to fear spiders. They have lots of legs and almost all are venomous \u2013 though the majority of species have venom too weak to cause issues in humans, if their fangs can pierce our skin at all. Even entomologists themselves can fall prey to arachnophobia. I know a few spider researchers who overcame their fear by observing and working with these fascinating creatures. If they can do it, so can you!<\/p>\n Matt Bertone is an Extension Associate in Entomology at North Carolina State University. This article was first published by The Conversation <\/a> and is republished under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article .<\/a><\/p>\n Spiders are not out to get you and actually prefer to avoid humans; we are much more dangerous to them than vice versa. Bites from spiders are extremely rare. Although there are a few medically important species like widow spiders and recluses, even their bites are uncommon and rarely cause serious issues.<\/p>\n If you truly can\u2019t stand that spider in your house, apartment, garage, or wherever, instead of smashing it, try to capture it and release it outside. It\u2019ll find somewhere else to go, and both parties will be happier with the outcome.<\/p>\n But if you can stomach it, it\u2019s OK to have spiders in your home. In fact, it\u2019s normal. And frankly, even if you don\u2019t see them, they\u2019ll still be there. So consider a live-and-let-live approach to the next spider you encounter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":783078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-783077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Spiders](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/iStock-484494604.jpeg\")
Spiders are not out to get you and actually prefer to avoid humans; we are much more dangerous to them than vice versa (Getty Images\/iStockphoto)<\/p>\n