I loved In a Dark, Dark Room. The illustrator, Dirk Zimmer, also did Joanna Cole's Bony-Legs, an excellent adaptation of an old Slavic folktale.

Spiders definitely 100% cannot do this, but some insects (mostly flies) unfortunately can. The good news, I guess, is that the worst offender on this front is geographically restricted to southern Mexico and most of Central and South America, so as long as you're not located there, you're pretty safe.

Hi, I study spiders for a living! I just wanted to say that spiders laying eggs in faces is definitely not a thing that can happen (it's not physiologically possible for a) spiders to lay eggs IN anything—they don't have ovipositors of any kind, and b) for spider eggs to develop in overheated environments like human…

Oh, yeah, I'm not saying it's impossible to believe in a divine being and accept evolution—plenty of people do that, including a fair number of scientists I know and respect. The problem arises when the interpretation is that there is an end product that is inevitable, and that end product is us. That's not how…

Ugh, *not only not new.

Not leaving out, but directly contradicting (and by extent, perpetuating one of the major misconceptions about evolution—that it is a directional, linear process ending in the "best" organism, mankind).

Oh man, I wanted Narnia to be real SO BADLY as a child. I had no idea it was about Jesus until I was in my twenties.

Hey, spiders aren't dangerous! Don't be scared of those!

No problem! If you're in the coastal states, especially the eastern side, the only medically significant species are the black widows, and there are two species, but they look basically alike (shiny black color, big round butt, long sharp legs, hourglass underneath). A handful of related species (brown widows and…

"Y'all" is what I've taken into my repertoire in my last ten years as a southern transplant— not because I hear people say it and it has rubbed off, but as an acceptable substitute to my local version, "you'ns", which is obviously intolerable.

Huh. Well, I hope you never need antivenin of any sort*, because properly identifying an animal is actually pretty important. :/

Florida has both wolf spiders (family Lycosidae) and hunstman spiders (family Sparassidae) as well as some other big hairy ones (fishing spiders, non-native tarantulas)... They aren't all the same, although I'm sure they're all just as scary if you're arachnophobic.

Ha, yeah, sorry, I didn't mean the source itself—like you, I have basically no opinion on the Guardian—but if their "experts" are the UK equivalent of the Orkin man and they mention that no one ever formally identified anything, but told members of the public to set fire to their stuff... those are some pretty big red…

Oh, I know, I didn't mean to offend—my apologies if that's the case! Poor choice of words on my part. I just can't imagine going through my day without seeing a spider or two (I'm probably more aware of them than most people, I guess, but if every spider caused a problem I'd have a hard time getting through the week).…

That's absolutely a fair criticism, but people who are able to ID bugs are entomologists or arachnologists, and while some people who work in pest control may be able to do so, they're not in the majority by any stretch of the imagination, nor have they generally had any formal training in identifying things. Not…

I expect better reading comprehension and skepticism from someone called ScienceGal. Check the source article.

No, that one was unconfirmed as well. Popular, though!

They didn't, in this case. Some arthropod laid eggs, eggs were never identified, eggs were destroyed.

Yeah, it's pretty common that news outlets make shit up without consulting anyone qualified. Pretty scary if you ask me...

Yeah, people keep finding vaguely buggy things, and then jumping to really absurd conclusions without ever asking anyone capable of confirming them.