Q&A OF THE YEAR
ARE SPIDERS GETTING BIGGER?
AS SPIDERS CAME INDOORS THIS AUTUMN, SOCIAL MEDIA WAS CONVINCED THE UK’S ARACHNIDS HAD GROWN IN SIZE
BY DR ADAM HART
ILLUSTRATIONS: DANIEL BRIGHT
John Keats might have described autumn as the “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” but for many arachnophobes it’s also the season of spiders. As evenings draw in, large spiders scuttling across the floor become a common sight. They are a reliable source of the ‘nature scare’ stories so beloved of the UK media, but are these spiders really getting bigger, as some reports claim?