Thousands of spiders could be in home at once

A house may contain “several thousand” spiders at one time.

Zoologist Luis Villazon said the larger number would emerge if baby spiders were included in humans.

He said: “A 2016 study of 50 homes in North Carolina, US, found cobweb spiders in 65 per cent of all rooms sampled, but this was looking at biodiversity and did not take into account the number of individual spiders.

“To add my own research, I vacuumed my entire house – a rare occurrence – and found only 26 spiders.

“But these are just the parts of the house we can easily inspect.

“If you think under the floorboards, behind the refrigerator, the attic, the garage, etc., there is so much more still hiding.

“Spiders lay between 10 and 250 eggs at a time, and house spiders can lay up to five eggs per year.”

He added: “Less than one per cent will reach adulthood, but if we count baby spiders in our household census, this figure could rise to several thousand spiders at any given time.”