Man In LSD Haze Says Spider Gave Birth In His Stomach: Police

There are multiple lessons in the recent experience of a 19-year-old South Euclid, Ohio, man, but we’ll start with one police shared on Facebook. In essence, police said, LSD is a powerful hallucinogen, and just because you think you swallowed a pregnant spider and her babies crawled out of your mouth doesn’t mean any of that actually happened.

But the man believed it, and in his altered state, called police to ask for assistance, the South Euclid Police Department said on its Facebook page. The man claimed to be able to feel all eight of the arachnid’s legs “crawling around in his throat,” police wrote.

Police rushed right over. They didn’t find evidence of a spider infestation in the man’s body, but “further investigation revealed the man had ingested LSD just an hour beforehand,” police wrote, adding that he was taken by ambulance to an area hospital for observation.

This would be a great story for a group session in rehab or a subplot for a “Cheech & Chong” movie. But police used the, ahem, spider man’s experience to increase awareness of the long, strange trip drugs can take you on:

“If this Facebook post doesn’t convince you not to partake in the use of drugs, nothing will,” it read.

The other lessons are based in science. We offer these seven freaky facts about spiders that may unnerve you, even if you’re not messed up:

No. 1: Reports of spiders living inside a human body are rare, though it has happened. In 2014, Australian Dylan Maxwell returned from a trip to the island Bali when doctors said the red scar-like trail from his naval traced the path of a tropical spider as it burrowed beneath the man’s skin. The spider survived for several days.

No. 2. What’s that you said? A doctor in China discovered that a spider had crawled into the ear canal of a woman who had gone to a hospital complaining of an itchy ear, MedicalDaily.com said in a translation of a story reported by Red Net News. The fairly good-sized, four-eyed, fur-covered spider with barbed-feet lived in the woman’s ear for five days.

No. 3. Accidentally swallowing spiders doesn’t happen all that often, or at all, despite pervasive myths that people unknowingly swallow seven or eight spiders a year.

“There’s absolutely no evidence whatsoever that we swallow spiders,” Charles Griswold, a spider expert at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, told National Geographic. It’s highly unlikely they’d crawl into an open mouth, he says. “If you have your mouth open, you’re probably breathing heavily, which would frighten them.”

However, in some parts of the world, including parts of Southeast Asia, spiders are consumed as food.

No. 5. Some spiders may look as if they’re part of a psychedelic trip. Jumping spiders have glowing patches of UV-reflecting scales on their bodies that signal to potential mates to come hither. The females’ palps — their front appendages, that is — glow, too, as if to say “let’s get this party started.”

No. 6. Despite their courtship dances and rituals, spiders don’t copulate. Rather, the male spider deposits his seed into ready-made sperm webs, transfers it in the syringe-like structures on his palps and then deposits it in the female’s genitalia, located on the underside of her abandon.

No. 7. All this takes place at great peril to the male spider. There’s no evidence to suggest spiders have the power of reason, but if they did, more of them might choose celibacy over the risk of the ultimate rejection — being eaten by a female spider. And a courtship that ends with mating doesn’t necessarily mean the male spider’s life will be spared. Among some species, the mating ritual climaxes with the female devouring the male.

Photo of a Salticidae, or jumping spider, by Glo Diaz via Flickr Commons