Spiders are always no more than 6ft. away??

Question

i was watching csi, and someone on it said that no matter where you are, spiders are always no more than 6ft. away. is that seriously true??

Answer 1

no, soo not true. spiders can be any where.  

Answer 2

Well, that comment is clearly one of those things TV writers love to throw in there to grab attention, but it's probably not a proven (or even seriously researched?) fact.

Wherever you find spider food, you will probably find spiders. If you constrain yourself to urban, suburban, and low-altitude areas with vegetation (and exclude areas like huge expanses of asphalt/concrete, like parking lots) it seems conceivable that there will be a spider somewhere within several feet of you most of the time. I don't know about 6 feet exactly. There are a LOT of spiders out there, so something in the range of 10-50 feet seems plausible to me. Definitely in my house, 6 feet is reasonable.

Obviously if you are floating on a plank out in the ocean, there aren't any spiders within 6 feet, and at places like the top of K2 and the middle of the Sahara desert, there isn't much of anything (though they aren't completely devoid of life - I just saw an Animal Planet spot about a new spider they found at very high altitude. A little jumping spider I think it was.)

On a related note, no you don't swallow spiders as you sleep, and there isn't a type of cactus that might explode with baby tarantulas.

Answer 3

Goliath birdeater is the largest spider even known. They have up to 12in long leg span when fully extended.

For more details see Wikipedia:

Answer 4

False.  You will not find them under the sea, nor in outer space, nor on other planets.

Now that we've eliminated the silly, ...

On perpetually frozen mountains, the nearest LIVE spider might be more than six feet away.  Ditto Antarctica.

In "bunny suit" clean room chip manufacturing facilities, spiders will be more than six feet away.