Spider... he is our hero

Spiders do a lot of things. They create intricate webs. They help the local habitat. They help cull the populations of things like horseflies and mosquitoes. They elicit screams of terror from the arachnophobic. And they can provide decent enemies when blown up to giant size and inserted into some sort of fantasy epic.

One thing that they cannot do, apparently, is provide a suitable defense for kidnapping or rape. And yet, Australian Philip Spiers tried to claim that the reasons he'd captured and sexually abused a woman were because of the venom of a funnel spider. The crime, for which Spiers admitted guilt, took place in 1997, and now, ten years later, toxicologists have proven that there is no medical evidence to support the claim.

Naturally, given our own penchant for watching horror and sci-fi movies, we could have very easily told Spiers the same thing, and we wouldn't have needed a fancy laboratory to do so. After all, while it's theoretically possible that a spider could lead to mental instability, we all know that such an event is the result of hundreds of spider eggs hatching in the brain. And yes, people could get angry due to spiders, but that's really only an issue when a giant arachnid refuses to allow itself to catch fire and burn the way that John Goodman intended.

Besides, we can all easily agree that, while spiders can sometimes lead to negative feelings and/or emotions, sometimes the bite of a spider brings great power. And, well, with great power comes the strange desire to wear skin-tight pajamas wherever you go.