Rhiannon Ingle
Ever been chilling at home only for a spider glimpsed in the corner of your eye give you the fright of your life?
Well, if you have been a victim to such an ordeal, you'll be surprised to find out there's a very good reason why you should never kill a spider in your own house.
Matt Bertone, an Extension Associate in Entomology at the North Carolina State University, has weighed in on the age-old wonder and explained exactly what not to do if you catch yourself in the hairy situation.
Read on to find out what you should do with all those eight-legged inhabitants living rent-free in your gaff.
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Now, it may be a difficult thing to wrap your head around if you're an arachnophobe but Matt explains spiders are 'an important part of nature and our indoor ecosystem'.
Not only that, but the little critters are also 'fellow organisms in their own right'.
Spiders can actually serve as welcomed guests in many households given that they are mostly harmless and provide a whole range of services like 'eating pests' with some even eating 'other spiders'.
Talk about the circle of life.
Putting the theory to the test, Matt and his colleagues conducted a visual survey of 50 North Carolina homes to record which arthropods live under our roofs.
The researchers found 'every single house [they] visited was home to spiders' with the 'most common species' they encountered being cobweb spiders and cellar spiders.
"Both build webs where they lie in wait for prey to get caught," Matt explained. "Cellar spiders sometimes leave their webs to hunt other spiders on their turf, mimicking prey to catch their cousins for dinner."
Such prey can include 'nuisance pests and even disease-carrying insects' such as mosquitos.
Matt continued: "So killing a spider doesn’t just cost the arachnid its life, it may take an important predator out of your home."
Now, when you put it like that...
If that wasn't enough to convince you to just leave the insects alone in your home, there's more.
The researcher stated: "Spiders are not out to get you and actually prefer to avoid humans; we are much more dangerous to them than vice versa."
However, if the idea of a spider in your house is driving you to despair then 'try to capture it and release it outside' as opposed to 'smashing it'.
Let's be honest - no one wants to deal with cleaning up a smashed spider.
"It’ll find somewhere else to go, and both parties will be happier with the outcome," Matt resolved.