# What Really Happens to a Spider After You Throw It Outside?

**Channel:** Zyka
**Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=futBUc1k9Eg
**Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/futBUc1k9Eg

## Chapters

- 0:00 — Why Tossing Spiders Outside Hurts
- 0:35 — House Spiders Live Indoors
- 1:52 — Why Spiders Appear In Fall
- 2:51 — What To Do With Spiders

## Transcript

**[0:00]:** You find a spider in your house and toss it outside. You feel good about it because you could have just squashed it, but the moment it lands in the grass, its real trouble begins. And not because of the fall, that part almost certainly didn't hurt. In 1926, scientist JBS Haldane wrote about how size affects falling. He said you could drop a mouse down a thousand yard mine shaft and it would get a slight shock and walk away as long as the ground was fairly soft. The reason is air resistance. The smaller the animal, the more the air slows its fall. A spider is far smaller than a mouse. So the landing isn't the problem. The problem is where it landed.

**[0:35]:** According to the Burke Museum in Seattle, fewer than 5% of the spiders you see indoors have ever been outside. So you didn't put that spider back home, you moved it out of its home. Most spiders in your house belong to a special group, house spiders. They're adapted to indoor life with a steady climate, little food, and very little water. Some house spider species have lived indoors since the Roman Empire. Even in Europe, where many of them come from, they're seldom found outdoors. They spread around the world through human trade and they move into new houses as egg sacs hidden on furniture and building materials. Rod Crawford has studied spiders at the Burke Museum for 50 years. His motto, "Everything that everybody knows about spiders is wrong." He surveyed spiders around Seattle. He found about 170 species. Only eight were commonly found both outdoors and inside houses.

**[1:24]:** Indoor and outdoor spiders are mostly different species living side by side separated by a wall. So what happens to a house spider in your garden? Some house spider species can survive outdoors, but most don't do well there and some species from other climates die quickly. Outside, it faces temperature swings, changing humidity, predators, and competition from spiders that belong there. Crawford put it bluntly, "Taking a house spider outside condemns it to a slower and more lingering death."

**[1:52]:** One science writer compared it to releasing a lion that has spent its whole life in a zoo. So why do spiders suddenly appear in late summer and fall? Most people assume they're coming inside to escape the cold. They're not. Spiders are cold-blooded and aren't attracted to warmth. The big spiders you notice in fall are mostly adult males that already lived inside. They're wandering around looking for a mate. Late summer is when a few large species mature, so people suddenly notice them everywhere. In the Pacific Northwest, the big one is the giant house spider, a species that came from Europe. People often mistake it for a wolf spider. Another common indoor species is the long-bodied cellar spider. Crawford says only one Northwest spider poses any danger to people, the western black widow. And it works in reverse, too. When outdoor spiders end up indoors, they usually die or fail to reproduce.

**[2:40]:** Each group is built for its own world. So, spraying outside won't stop spiders inside. Crawford says exterminators selling outdoor treatments for house spiders are taking advantage of customers.

**[2:51]:** House spiders are mostly harmless, and they're actually useful. They even hunt the pests you don't want, either. Clothes moths, cockroaches, fleas, carpet beetles, and even bed bugs. So, what should you do instead? If it's clearly a garden spider, like an orb weaver, putting it back outside is fine. But if it's a house spider, Crawford suggests moving it to another building, like a garage, a shed, or a crawl space. Or, in his words, just wave as it goes by. As Crawford points out, there was spider habitat where your home stands for millions of years. So, the spider you threw outside probably wasn't lost. It was already home.