When it comes to whether or not you should kill spiders, the common consensus is “No.” This is because, both in the wild and in your home, they contribute significantly to the greater good. There are, of course, valid reasons to put an end to a spider’s life. Don’t hesitate to smash that spider if it’s a very dangerous species like a Black Widow and your infant is moving towards it too quickly for you to stop it.
There is no question that you should kill a spider if you or a loved one are in immediate danger. If, on the other hand, you come across a spider relaxing on its web in the corner of your garage, you should probably leave it alone because of the good it does. In light of this, let’s talk about the ways in which spiders are useful, as well as the best ways to kill one humanely.
Why House Spiders Are Beneficial/Why You Shouldn’t Kill House Spiders?
House spiders (a slang term for spiders that typically live indoors and weave their webs) are beneficial unless they become a safety concern. If it’s out of the way in your attic, garage, or shed, it’s actually doing you a favor!
Natural Pest Control
In the same way that commercial pest treatment may get rid of flies, roaches, and stink bugs for a fee, a spider can do the same thing for free. Spiders can also eat termites, which you do not want in your home. If you leave spiders alone to do their thing in the dark and warm places they love, they will repay you by eating a lot of insects that are a nuisance.
If a house spider ever becomes a problem, you can relocate it outside, but it may not do as well as other spider species in its new environment. Having said that, trapping and releasing a spider provides it with a better chance of being beneficial to someone else than simply killing it.
Why Spiders Are Beneficial to Nature and Why You Shouldn’t Kill Them?
What creature can actually control mosquitoes? Spiders. Remember that creature we talked about up there that not only helps with cockroaches, stink bugs, and flies inside the house, but also outside?
There’s no need to freak out if you see some spiders outside your house or stumble onto a web while hiking. Having spiders near your home or in an area that would otherwise be swarming with pests can do wonders to decrease the number of insects that otherwise would be a huge worry, just as spiders assist keep your home free of irritating pests (nobody enjoys being b. Simply put, spiders are good for the environment in the same way that they are good for your home.
Reasons Why Daddy Long Legs Should Not Be Killed
It should be mentioned that the common Daddy Long Legs is not a spider but rather an arachnid. This arachnid belongs to the order Opiliones and is therefore classified as an arachnid. These arachnids are even less of a threat than spiders because they lack the segmented bodies, webs, venom, and fangs necessary to bite a human (their fangs can only injure insects).
But as a predator, they excel at getting rid of pesky insects like flies. Since a Daddy Long Legs is never going to hurt you, you can ignore it without any qualms.
Does Killing a Spider Bring Bad Luck?
Numerous myths and folktales attribute financial success and good fortune to spiders. Some ideas discuss how spiders signify hard work (if they are the kind that makes webs), good health, and cleanliness, however tracing the actual origin of some of these concepts can be difficult. However, many common beliefs about spiders are either untrue or impossible to verify scientifically.
Facts And Figures
There’s no hard evidence that having spiders in your home makes you rich and getting rid of them makes you poor, but it’s possible that killing a lot of spiders could bring you “bad luck” by opening the door to other pests like flies and termites. However, if you are superstitious, you may find comfort in the fact that it is believed in many cultures that apologizing to a spider before killing it will cancel out any potential bad luck associated with killing the spider. In essence, the spider understands that you deserve forgiveness for killing it. You can avoid bad luck by saying “Sorry!”
When you kill a spider, do you attract more?
Aside from the old urban legend that humans swallow spiders in our sleep (which was actually made up to show how readily people believe ridiculous tales), another widespread urban myth is that killing one spider magically attracts more. This is completely untrue. There are no magical pheromones generated by a murdered spider that prompt others to come, and spiders will not appear to revenge their fallen brethren; it’s all a hoax.
Is it okay to leave spiders in your house?
Should a spider die, another one in the neighborhood might move into the vacant web space; after all, it’s a nice, warm place to live. It wasn’t there to pay respects to the dead spider, but rather because it saw the empty home as a good spot to make a new start.
What’s the most humane way to get rid of a spider?
Many believe that encasing the spider in a glass or sucking it up with a vacuum is the most efficient method of killing it. These methods are quite brutal because certain spiders can go for hours without breathing because their metabolism slows when they don’t have oxygen.
If you vacuum a spider, it will either be severely crushed as it is sucked up, or it will become stuck in the vacuum’s dust and filth and starve to death over several days.
Most humane way: Place a container over it and freeze
You should freeze a spider if you have to kill it fast without causing it unnecessary agony, or if you have trapped it but don’t want to release it safely (maybe because it is highly venomous to people).
A spider enters a state similar to hibernation when temperatures drop below freezing, and if it freezes to death while in this slumber state, it just passes away. If you manage to capture a spider and contain it, you can then place it in the freezer.
If you absolutely have to kill a spider, rather than ignore it or capture it and release it far away from your home/office/etc., this is the most compassionate alternative.