A fear of spiders, or arachnophobia, seems quite common around the world. Last year, a team of researchers published a global database showing the pervasiveness of arachnophobic sentiments in media based on their investigation of a decade of online newspaper coverage from over 80 countries. These fears remain even though fewer than 0.5 percent of spider species can actually harm humans through their venom, and most of these species live far from humans, anyway.But there are some exceptions—and my home country, the Philippines, is one of them.One of the authors of the study, entomologist...…A fear of spiders, or arachnophobia, seems quite common around the world. Last year, a team of researchers published a global database showing the pervasiveness of arachnophobic sentiments in media based on their investigation of a decade of online newspaper coverage from over 80 countries. These fears remain even though fewer than 0.5 percent of spider species can actually harm humans through their venom, and most of these species live far from humans, anyway.But there are some exceptions—and my home country, the Philippines, is one of them.One of the authors of the study, entomologist...WW…