Everybody has a spider story, but these amazing creatures are often misunderstood
- Written by Andrew Walker, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland

The comedian Jimeoin once wrote a song titled Everybody’s Got a Spider Story (I believe; I can’t find it on YouTube now I am looking), in which each verse tells some alarming story of giant spiders crawling on faces or millions of baby spiders bursting out of someplace unexpected.
Review: Silk and Venom: The Incredible Lives of Spiders – James O'Hanlon (NewSouth)
James O'Hanlon’s Silk and Venom: The Incredible Lives of Spiders is, at heart, a call for us to start telling better spider stories – stories that celebrate the incredible biology of these creatures, rather than focusing on the surprise, terror and disgust they evoke in some people.
The book begins with an exploration of humankind’s negative feelings towards spiders, before examining a series of fascinating examples of spider biology, following the theory that to remove fear you must supply knowledge.