WOW! This could have been me many, many yrs. ago. I got caught in a sleeping bag whose zipper jammed & I went ballistic. I finally went for counseling yrs. later when we went out on a friend's pontoon boat for a day on the water & since the river had 2 hilly shorelines, the spiders-ALL KINDS-were "ballooning" on the wind across the water. I could deal with it in the daytime, but when it got dark, it truely WAS my worst nightmare.

I watch "Arachnaphobia" ( movie) every so often for "continuing therapy." I'm much better now than I was many yrs. ago. Get help!

Out of mom, dad, and 6 kids...my dad, me, and my younger son are the only ones who don't suffer severe arachnophobia. One of my sisters almost broke her leg while running away for a very small spider on the front porch wall and my older son almost wrecked his car when a very small spider dropped into his view from his sun visor.

To put this in perspective, my sister is 6' tall (but too old for this study) and my son is 6'6". To watch people of that size get hysterical over spiders that are smaller than a pinky fingernail, and completely harmless, is too much for me, I can't help laughing out loud. I feel bad for doing that but I just don't understand that kind of reflexive fear. Once, when charged by a rottweiler, I instinctively turned to him, yelled and charged the dog. He ran away! At 5'6", I'm the one who had to kill spiders for my son when he was still living at home but was already the size of a professional basketball player.

I, at the age of 45, have never had any fear whatsoever of spiders; not so for my strong, smart 16-year-old son - he practically faints at the sight of a cute little Daddy Long Legs!  I also work with a 56-year-old archaeologist (with a PhD) who'd rather eat glass than have to deal with a spider. Go figure!

Well, I am so glad that I read these comments, my 19 year old son reacts to spiders the same way that many of you have mentioned. I just don't understand it either. He calls spiders, "The spawn of satan". Is there therapy for this unreasoning fear? No one in my family has it. Of course his father was adopted, so who knows if my son inherited his fear from the paternal family side.

I am totally, unreasonably, terrified of spiders. They skitter. They drop from nowhere. They leave webs for me to walk into. They SKITTER!!!!! AHHHHH!!!!

I am 41 years old and have always been terrified of the little leggy things with their fat soft blob bodies (shudder!). I can't even watch them on TV (shudder shudder!!).

I wonder if the researchers are going to provide footstools and cottage cheese as well?

There is NO WAY in HECK i would do this study. I'm terrified of spiders and jump and scream just at a picture of them. It's a true phobia and I don't see any reason to overcome it. My life won't be drastically improved if I am no longer afraid of spiders. So why go through therapy? I think the parents who authorize their girls to participate need to be investigated for emotional abuse!! Ha ha.

When my daughter was about 12, I picked her up at school one day. She was in the front seat with me, and about a block from the school, she became histerical. Her face was bright red, tears were running down her race and she was thrashing around so bad I was afraid of having an accident, so I pulled over on a side road. I kept asking her what was wrong. Finally, she managed to sputter out 'ss ss sspideder' . I looked where she was pointing and saw a spider so small I could barely see it. It was miniscule and hanging from a thread attached to the roof of the car. I reached over and grabbed the thread he was hanging from and dropped him out the window. Slowly my daughter calmed down, but it was a good half hour before she was back to normal.

The spider scene from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets gave her nightmares for weeks.

I wanted to be like Ellie May Clampett or Jane Goodall when I was little, the more critters, the merrier! I'm still that way, dragonflies are my current best buddies. Here's one study that I would never qualify for.

I think stinging insects should have been included in this study, I know more people who "lose it" over bees/wasps/hornets than spiders.

Was I the only woman a little tiny bit offended by the quote "Spiders provoke revulsion for many people and even set off fearful panic. Girls in particular are frequently affected," the university said. I'm not scared of bugs and none of my sisters (there are four of us) or my mother are scared of bugs. I am a little tiffed by the whole girl bug thing. True there are some bugs i don't like but honestly does anyone actually like maggots, helga mites and roaches.

The truth is i think more men are scared of spiders than women.

hey did you know whereever you are, there's a spider within 6 feet of you? aahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet.Eating her curdes and whey.Along came a spider and sat down beside her and said.HEY!What's in the bowl b*tch.Ohhhhh.Thank's Dice Man for some great laughs.

Just thinking about being shown spider pictures freaks me out, haha. Granted I don't think I'm as bad as some...spiders need to be roughly an inch across before I refuse to go anywhere near them. The "small" ones I'm actually ok killing.

I think it's the fact that they don't seem afraid of humans and they are hideous and so small and fast you don't see them coming. You could be sitting on your couch minding your own business and BAM a spider rappels down from the ceiling and is right in front of your face...or one will scury out from under the couch a few ft away from your feet. They wouldn't bother me as much if I knew they would avoid crawling on me at all costs...but I don't think that's the case.

Oddly enough I think that's my only insect/animal phobia. Other bugs don't bother me and I actually like rodents and snakes.

When I was dating my husband, we were once stopped at a red light when a spider floated down on a web right between us. We both jumped out of the car. It took the beeping of the cars behind us to convince us to get back in the car, move it to the corner and procede to search and destroy the monster. He's gotten a little better in his role as the spider and cricket killer, but our house is always well stocked with bug spray.

If you think the fact that you are always 6 ft away from a spider is creepy, you should check out the statistics about how many bugs you swallow in your sleep over a lifetime. Yuck.

Little Miss Muffet,

Sat on a tuffet,

Pregnant and very forlorn!

For it wasn't a spider

That had sat down beside her -

But Little Boy Blue with his Horn.