Can Spiders Drink Spit?
WouterSpiders have a mouth. They can eat and drink, but they’re only able to swallow liquids. They use a stercoral sac to extract moisture and bacteria. This is also the place they store food.
Most hunting spiders have serrated chelicerae. These help them to chew and shred food. When they’re not using these mouth parts, they can wrap their prey with a bolus of saliva, bacteria, and other chemicals.
There are two main groups of spiders that will ingest prey, and these are web builders and hunters. Web builders may not be able to hold their prey against a hard surface, so they will spit the prey into their mouths.
Some hunters, like brown widow spiders, use traumatic insemination to mate. Spiders have chemoreceptors along their legs, which allow them to detect the thousands of chemicals humans exhale. If a spider is near a CO2-exhaling cave, it will avoid entering it.
It’s rare for a human to actually swallow a spider. According to arachnologist Rod Crawford, there are only eight documented cases each year, and most of the reports are just stories.
People who think they’ve swallowed a spider should not flush the evidence down the toilet. That would make the event a complete sham. However, there’s no reason why the spider couldn’t have moved into the mouth. The only thing stopping them is the gag reflex.
Arachnologists say that the most likely scenario for a person to swallow a spider while sleeping is if the spider is moving across the face. That’s because the muscles of the face are relaxed during sleep.
