For male spiders, sex often ends with something really unpleasant: Death. Fortunately for at least one species of nope, the males have figured out how they might remain alive to scare the shit out of us another day — they eat out the female spider in order to prevent their own untimely demise.

On the list of many, many irrational fears I have, waking up with a spider and/or spiders living inside my body pretty much tops everything else. Somehow, British pop star Katie Melua managed to live through this nightmare without going completely insane with terror.

I did your week's grocery shopping, wasn't that nice of me? Reach inside this bag and see what delicious treats I've bought you! PSYCH. The bag is actually full of venomous spiders and now you're dead! I really got you, huh?

A very frightened man in Seattle burned down the house he was renting when he tried to kill a spider with a makeshift blowtorch. I can't say that this is the best way to do things, but I also can't disagree with his stance.*

A Kansas woman has been charged with arson after setting a fire in her home that was part of a failed attempt to kill a spider.

It's a question we've been avoiding for far too long: Can lady spiders really have it all? Well, unless by "have it all" you mean "munch all of the human eyeballs" (a birthright shared by spiders of all genders), then NOPE. In at least one species, female spiders, much like female humans, are expected to choose…

The British Tarantula Society held its annual expo in Coventry, England this week. It's the biggest tarantula event in the world, boasting the presence of 30,000 fuzzy, 8-legged friends under one roof.

Much as we love the present trend of sticking drug-molecules on everything from coffee mugs to t-shirts, we crave something new. Fortunately, science-themed artist Delftia has a novel take on subtle drug jewelry: pendants that replicate spider webs spun under the influence of psychoactive drugs.

If Spiders terrify you (yes!), the news that they "twerk" will either allay your fears or terrify you even further.

If you’re one of those smug Californians who’s always going on about fish tacos and great weather and avocados and relaxed marijuana regulations, there’s a grumpy Northeasterner getting ready to have a schadenfreude party at your expense this weekend. That’s because this weekend in California is Tarantula Bang Fest…

We've known for a while now that lady spiders are the animal kingdom's OG misandrists. Lady spiders hit it and quit it like it's their job (which it is, I guess—it's not like they mate, chew on bugs, and work 9-5 at the bail bonds office), and when they "quit it" they also preemptively quit it on behalf of every…

New research has disabused Spider scientists (technical term, I assure you) at the Smithsonian of a long-standing misconception that males of the "highly sexually dimorphic and polygamous" wink, wink, nudge, nudge giant wood spider persuasion would sever their own genitals during copulation with a female spider to…

Well, this is romantic. It has been discovered by researchers at the National University of Singapore that males of a certain breed of spider — specifically, the tropical orb-spider Nephilengys malabarensis — will often castrate themselves either fully or partially, leaving a piece of their reproductive anatomy inside…

Spiders are creepy! I mean, they are kind of neat, but mostly they cause people to scurry away in fear and sometimes even emit high-pitched shrieks. Well, if you are one of the people who can't stand those little multi-legged crawlers, you might be in luck. A new study has found that it is possible to turn people from…

Because they feed on it! Just kidding — actually, fear just makes spiders look bigger, as scientists determined when they had a bunch of volunteers hang out with tarantulas and then guess their size. People who were afraid of spiders estimated them as bigger than did those who were just fine with the eight-legged…