Scientist Dr Karl says daddy long leg spiders can bite you

Australian scientist Dr Karl Kruszelnicki has addressed an age-old myth about the daddy long legs spider that thousands deem to be true. 

Many believe the arachnids are the ‘most venomous’ spiders in the world and their fangs are too short to cause any damage – but Dr Karl said this isn’t the case. 

In a short TikTok video, the 73-year-old boffin said the fangs can sometimes penetrate into the skin, but the venom is ‘incredibly mild’ and ‘won’t kill you’. 

‘I guess we’ve all been spun a web of lies,’ Dr Karl said in the now-viral clip.  

Beloved boffin Dr Karl Kruszelnicki said the fangs of daddy long legs spiders can sometimes be long enough to penetrate into the skin, but the venom is ‘incredibly mild’ and ‘won’t kill you’

‘We’ve all heard the story that the daddy long legs spider is the most poisonous spider on earth, but it can’t kill you because the fangs are too short,’ he said. 

Dr Karl added how the fangs are ‘sometimes long enough’ to bite into the skin, but this is unlikely. 

‘The toxin is there but it’s incredibly, incredibly, incredibly mild – it won’t kill you,’ he said. 

The myth that daddy long legs spiders has been circling for decades, but there’s no scientific evidence to support it. 

In the video Dr Karl also highlighted other facts about these spiders, saying many are ‘opilionids’ with only two eyes instead of eight. 

He also mentioned spiders can be ‘venomous’ not ‘poisonous’, as the venom isn’t ingested through the mouth. 

Within 24 hours the video went viral exceeding more than 360,000 views. 

‘I am today years old at 38 and only JUST being properly educated on daddy long legs. My childhood was a lie,’ one person wrote in the comments. 

Another added: ‘But who started it?!?’  

‘Thanks Dr Karl for this for this information, I’ll impress my friends with this next week,’ a third said. 

In another video, Dr Karl revealed cracking your knuckles won’t lead to arthritis but may hinder your ability to open jars later on in life.

He cited two studies that debunked the myth that cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis

‘When you pull your finger to crack the joint, you make the joint space – the space between the bones – bigger and this sucks the ligaments in and it makes a gas bubble pop into existence,’ Dr Karl explained in the now-viral clip. 

‘However the energy released is only about seven per cent of what you need to damage the cartilage.’ 

In another video, Dr Karl revealed cracking your knuckles won’t lead to arthritis but may hinder your ability to open jars later on in life 

The doctor brought up one study involving a doctor who cracked the knuckles on only his left hand for 50 years.

‘At the end, no difference in arthritis between this hand and that hand but one person is not an adequate sample size,’ he said. 

Another study Dr Karl highlighted had a much bigger sample size of 300 people who cracked the joints on their both of their hands for 35 years.

‘They had no extra cases of arthritis but they had slightly swollen joints, which of itself is no big deal, and their grip strength is about about one quarter of what it should be,’ he said.

‘So there’s no strong evidence that cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis however it could make it difficult to unscrew a jar of Vegemite.’