1,001 Facts That Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader (103 page)

American Mosquito Control Association,
www.mosquito.org
.

775

FACT :
When biting prey,
Brazilian wandering spiders inject up to .003 ounces of powerful venom
, an amount strong enough to kill 300 mice.
What do you call 300 dead mice on the jungle floor? A good start.

Robert S. Anderson, Richard Beatty, and Stuart Church, Insects and Spiders of the World (Marshall Cavendish, 2003).

776

FACT :
Jumping spiders hunt by stalking and leaping on victims while trailing a safety line of silk behind them.
Their eight eyes give them almost 180-degree vision
, and they can jump up to twenty times their own length.
Because regular old walking spiders weren’t creepy enough.

Paul Hillyard, The Private Life of Spiders (New Holland Publishers, 2007).

777

FACT :
The Sydney funnel-web spider is Australia’s most dangerous arachnid, with a bite capable of
causing death in as little as fifteen minutes
.
Just try not to get bitten until the end of your trip, because Sydney is a great city and I recommend seeing as much of it as you can before you die. Especially since you probably won’t be returning.

Jerome Goddard, Physician’s Guide to Arthropods of Medical Importance, 5th ed. (CRC Press, 2007).

778

FACT :
It has no bite, but the common housefly is one of the world’s most deadly insects, thanks
to the long list of diseases that it carries and spreads
: typhoid, cholera, gangrene, tuberculosis, smallpox, bubonic plague, diptheria, dysentery, and more.
Bubonic plague? That shit’s still around?!

Leland Ossian Howard, The House Fly, Disease Carrier: An Account of Its Dangerous Activities and of the Means of Destroying It, 3rd ed. (Frederick A. Stokes, 1911).

779

FACT :
An individual housefly can carry
up to 33 million bacteria
on the outer surface of its body, 6 million on its feet alone.
For this reason, you should always insist that a housefly wipe its feet before entering your home.

Leland Ossian Howard, The House Fly, Disease Carrier: An Account of Its Dangerous Activities and of the Means of Destroying It, 3rd ed. (Frederick A. Stokes, 1911).

Julie J. Shaffner, Kasey Jo Warner, and W. Wyatt Hoback, Filth Flies: Experiments to Test Flies as Vectors of Bacterial Disease (The American Biology Teacher Online, Feb 2007).

780

FACT :
Houseflies can also carry microbes of conjunctivitis (pinkeye) from diseased eyes to healthy eyes, including trachoma,
a highly contagious cause of blindness
throughout the world.
Which ranks trachoma ahead of other causes of blindness such as science and the light.
(Springer, 2008).

Mitchell H. Friedlaender, “Conjunctivitis,” The Merck Manuals Online Medical Library, June 2008,
www.merck.com
.

781

FACT :
Flies typically transmit their harmful microorganisms
to humans through our mouths
, when we eat food on which they have landed and deposited their feces and bacteria.
I suppose that’s better than letting them crap right into your mouth. But not by much.

Julie J. Shaffner, Kasey Jo Warner, and W. Wyatt Hoback, Filth Flies: Experiments to Test Flies as Vectors of Bacterial Disease (The American Biology Teacher Online, Feb 2007).