Watching QI, I'm always surprised by how many urban legends I've in the past accepted as fact because I've never made the effort to research for myself their truth. These days I very rarely accept another person's 'general knowledge' fact without evidence. So here's a thread for people to debunk the myths and urban legends they've come across and found to be utter rubbish. To start: Daddy longlegs are the most poisonous creatures in the world, but can't penetrate human skin I've heard this repeated quite a lot by some quite intelligent people. It's utter rubbish. Daddy longlegs have no venom whatsoever and frequently do not even eat in their lifetimes - adults live simply to mate before dying....
Poor Daddy long legs, I swear they must be the most abused animals. Another one I've heard is that cocaine's not actually addictive, it's just so nice you want more.
Hahah :lol: , I wish you'd finish your meals once in a while instead of pigging out on speedballs in between meals!
That's probably cause they ate a spider to catch it, then a bird, then a cat, then a dog and then a horse.
Yeah I heard that too, but on some programme it said that similar 'daddy longleg' type things exist in some other country and these are the ones that are the evil biters. But maybe that is an urban myth too!
Yeah hehe, I had a look at the Snopes article on it. The cranefly sort are completely harmless, and the spider sort are poisonous, but only to small insects, well, as far as we'll probably ever know seeing as the only way of testing it would be to milk the spider for it and inject the venom into someone. But that pesky Geneva convention prevents it.
What about force-feeding someone a couple of dozen of them? Surely in such numbers, a little of the venom would be absorbed into the bloodstream.
Urban myth no 2: Churchill knew that the Nazis were planning a devastating air-raid on Coventry, but took no action as this would alert them to the fact that British intelligence had broken their codes. This was roundly rebutted in a letter to the Times yesterday by eminent military historian Professor Sir Michael Howard (no, not that Michael Howard).
Well of course, we wouldn't have wanted the Nazis to know we were on to them, that would be silly! What about the Titanic/ Olympic legend!
actually they did test the daddy long legs spider myth on Mythbusters. didn't have anyone eat them or drink their poision; but one of the guys stuck his arm in a tube fully sealed off. the tube was FULL of daddy long legs, and none of them were able to bite him. so .. myth ... busted :tongue:
