tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11558306.post7717823869251563..comments2024-03-19T11:13:40.642-07:00Comments on A Different Perspective: Swallowing Spiders and UFOsKRandlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06333125414889883920noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11558306.post-68475932378522062017-12-13T11:45:40.200-08:002017-12-13T11:45:40.200-08:00Can people swallow spiders? At least one baby did...Can people swallow spiders? At least one baby did. From Newspaper.com, July 17, 1933, Garrett Clipper from Garrett, Indiana · Page 4:<br />"A spider crawled through the open mouth and into the stomach of the baby son of Mr. and Mrs. George Brown of Brazil. Ind.. while the child was asleep in the shade of a tree near their home. The child became ill and a physician was called. The spider, still intact, was removed."<br /><br />Kind of hard to see the whole logic of this. Did they watch to see if it crawled into the mouth or did the baby just eat it because it was hungry.<br /> <br />The July 8, 1933 Daily Banner, Greencastle, Indiana from Newspaper.com has other details of the same case.<br /><br />So although it seems unlikely to happen, it can happen. But this is a far cry from 8 spiders a year.<br /><br />In “Clinical psychopathology”, 1978, Volume 4, page 257, a psychological background to the whole thing is obvious which touches some innate fear in some people.<br />https://books.google.com/books?id=3_5rAAAAMAAJ&q=insect+folklore+spider<br />“Many patients are inordinately frightened of .. spiders.. falling into their mouths during sleep.”<br /><br />But 8 spiders a year? How do you even measure this? How does one measure if the spider goes down the throat into the stomach rather than inhaling it into the lungs? Maybe just “going into the mouth” is what they really mean. <br /><br />If one arm-waves a little, it does sound like something a university or the EPA might measure indirectly. For instance, to measure indoor air quality, a scientist or grad student might build a fan with a filter and suck the air into an intake nozzle (not a human mouth) at a certain speed. At the end of a time period, they would examine the filter and count the particulates (dust, dirt, pollen, insect parts and/or spiders). Live spiders might run away after the air pressure has stopped or if the air pressure was not strong enough to begin with. So, they would likely only count dead spiders. Some student would be surprised and say that “Hey, here’s a spider, if that nozzle had been a person’s mouth and they slept with their mouth open, then that spider would have gotten into their mouth!”. Some student would have extrapolated the data and gotten 8 spiders a year since it is unlikely they ran the test for one year. This would have made a sensational presentation in college. This is all speculation of course. How many grad or undergrad student presentations for classes get published or on the Internet? Not many I suspect.<br /><br />I could not find an EPA test or grad student test/lab/study on the topic. The only mention that is relevant is from the Cornell Engineer by "Margot A.S. Vigeant" from April 1992, page 60.<br />https://books.google.com/books?id=x6lTAAAAYAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=swallows<br />https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924063532463;view=1up;seq=7<br />“The average person swallows eight spiders while sleeping, in their lifetime”<br /> <br />It may have been fiction from her inventive mind or maybe she heard some rumors of a test in the university. I don’t know. <br /><br />But surprisingly she became a professor and still works in academia.<br />https://www.bucknell.edu/academics/engineering-college-of/academic-departments/chemical-engineering/faculty-and-staff/margot-a-s-vigeant<br /><br />It would be interesting to see how she came up with the idea, whether it was fiction or nonfiction.Moonmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10293997781090304733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11558306.post-1904931945730706012017-09-27T12:52:16.128-07:002017-09-27T12:52:16.128-07:00This reminds me of that "black eyed kids"...This reminds me of that "black eyed kids" tripe that started out as a transparent bit of hokum, but has developed into the topic of books by authors who really should know better. For a few years, one could easily trace the origin of the myth to a self-proclaimed "journalist" who actually had more bona fides as a fiction writer, though that isn't saying much. Pretty much everyone seemed to take the story, which read like a fairly good high school creative writing project, at face value and would parrot the "fact" that it was written by a journalist, even though it was easy to check. <br /><br />The last time I tried to trace the story to its origins, the whole topic was hopelessly muddled by credulous people endlessly quoting one another all over the internet. I saw several later posts from anonymous "witnesses" whose writing sounded an awful lot like the originator of the myth. There was very little variation in the narratives. It's easy to imagine the "journalist" carefully manipulating the story, no doubt just for the hell of it.Some Guy on the Innernetshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13374415771586647422noreply@blogger.com