Why do people hate spiders?

A Phidippus johnsoni jumping spider. Betsy Mason Over the last decade as my obsession with jumping spiders has grown, I’ve often wondered why some most people hate spiders. What is it about spiders that makes them particularly aversive? At first I was mostly just curious, but my conversations with arachnologists convinced me this question is actually important. Many researchers struggle to find funding to study spiders, which some of them attribute, at least in part, to the fact that people don’t like spiders. People are the ones deciding which studies get funded, as well as which animals are worth conserving and protecting. This is bad news for spiders. So figuring out why people feel this way is a worthy goal. A couple years ago I wrote an essay for Knowable Magazine arguing that part of the problem is our lack of knowledge about spiders, which is partly the fault of this anti-spider bias in research funding, which is partly the fault of our lack of knowledge. I suggested we need…