Anne-Laure FelixWhile nature restoration law was adopted last week by the European Council, the first continent-wide, comprehensive law of its kind, setting binding targets to restore degraded ecosystems, and while the Swiss are due to vote next September on the biodiversity initiative, which if adopted would enshrine landscape protection in the constitution, I wanted to explore our ambivalent relation to nature and biodiversity.
If you’ve read my previous article, you probably understood that - too nicely put to be even close of reality - I’m not a big fan of those eight-legged-biodiversity-representants, aka spiders. As I was enjoying my first summer in my new Zürich apartment, late dinners with friends on the balcony, sleeping with open windows at night, I spotted one. Inside my apartment. It was big, it was dark, it was hairy, it was moving. Too fast, too close. Why is it so difficult for some of us humans to live together with other species? How did we come to be so disconnected from nature and act like we are not part of it?
A brief history of fear
During my permaculture design course, I had shared my concerns fear about not being able to deal with the spiders. Our fauna expert, also passionate about spiders, was of an incredible understanding and support as she worked with me to help me mastering my fear. In addition to organizing night-time observation explorations to desensitize the most phobic among us, she introduced me to a book whose title says it all: I'm not afraid of spiders anymore [1]. Written by a clinical psychologist specialised in the treatment of phobias and a teacher-researcher at the National Museum of Natural History in France, the book provides an insight into understanding the origin of the fear of spiders and gives valuable tools to deal with it, offering as a starting point to take a test to assess our level of fear.
Arachnophobia is often mistakenly regarded as an unimportant fear, which can trigger laughter or mockery. It is, however, a real disorder, disabling and causing suffering. Cinema has for years had fun exploiting about all possible nature-related phobias, and not just with horror movies. Everyone remembers the Arachnophobia movie (“Eight legs. Two fangs. And an attitude”)? Well Arachnophobia is classified as a horror “comedy” movie, fueling this idea that phobias – and phobic people - are not a big deal, and even funny.
In Arachnophobia, we see that the main character, portrayed by Jeff Daniels, is afraid of spiders and that his phobia stems from his childhood, when a spider climbed into his cot. Cases exist where phobia is the result of a childhood trauma or particularly traumatic events. Yet those are exceptional cases and phobias result more commonly from a wrong association of ideas. According to the definition given by Wikipedia, a phobia is an anxiety disorder, defined by an irrational, unrealistic, persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation. Phobia is now a commonly used term to, erroneously, refer to a fear, while in reality it is a (high) degree of fear. While fear is initially a reflex alert mechanism (aka primary fear) for animals, including humans, enabling us to fight or flee in case of danger, secondary or civilizational fears drive us humans to work, dress ourselves, educate our children etc… Because secondary fears are intellectualized, i.e. they are the result of a thinking process we are not always aware of, and because they come from a multiple number of sources like our education, our experiences, and also the repetition of events, the degree and nature of fear will be different from one individual to another, bringing emotion in the equation. In Je n’ai plus peur des araignées, the authors propose to ask ourselves the following question: would a majority of people react like me in front of [type here the object of your fear]? If it’s not the case, your fear is certainly coming from a wrong association of ideas (spider = danger), and you were conditioned to think as both being naturally related.
Facing our fears to get rid of them
Reading this actually made me feel better: if I had been conditioned to think that spiders were a danger to me and that I should run away from them, I could recondition myself. This is where the book suggests going through a desensitization process: rather than avoiding the object of our fear (which may seem at first like an excellent idea to stay calm in all circumstances), it invites us to confront it a little more each time, in order to reduce the sensations and reactions associated with it. That’s what I started doing during my permaculture experience, and also when I travelled to Peru. While I was exploring the Amazon river and forest, I decided to confront myself with a tarantula. Yes, I know I was supposed to go step by step, but I’m more the all-in kind of person, always aiming higher! So here I was in the forest with our guide, looking for hints of tarantulas, and we found two of them! The size and speed of them was just insane. I can’t say I slept well that night in my forest cabin, and I was relieved to go back to Europe where such specimens didn’t exist. Except that I didn't yet know I'd have to deal with a special type of spider in my own home.
The Nosferatu spider: a well-established species in Switzerland
Back home, comforted by my new favourite book and new control skills when facing arthropods, I decided to continue the desensitization process by taking a picture of each of the spiders I would spot in my apartment, before catching them in a glass and putting them back outside. They were so many that I started to wonder if this was normal or if I should inform anyone about this. I started to make some research as I also realized there were all the same kind, and that’s where I learnt that this kind was the Zoropsis spinimana, the spiny-legged zoropse, otherwise known colloquially as Nosferatu due to the hairs on their back looking like a skull head [2]. That's where I called the experts.
The info fauna foundation is the national data and information center for Swiss fauna. It is responsible for compiling the catalog and atlas of Swiss fauna and promotes the dissemination of knowledge about species through publications and training courses. It also coordinates regional networks of experts, providing advice and support to the Swiss confederation, cantons, numerous institutions and the general public on the conservation of species and their habitats. Talking to the info fauna manager of arachnid data, Serena Pedraita, and the Swiss spider’s expert Gilles Blandenier [3], I’ve learnt that info fauna has been identifying areas where the Nosferatu spider had been reported for years already. And looking at their map, it was not just in my house.
![Distribution of the Nosferatu spider in Switzerland in 2023 Source: info fauna [4]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.super.so%2Fc968687a-30b5-48d8-92f5-39efa6ba4f6f%2Fimages%2F02cb7813-c874-4890-a5fd-5e7a458e7006.jpg&w=3840&q=90)
This spider is already well-known in Switzerland as it was first observed back in 1994 and is present today in low-lying inhabited areas, in and around our houses. Compared with other spiders from central Europe, it is a big spider. It is an allochthonous species, i.e. not Switzerland native, coming from the Mediterranean basin. Although it would be quick to think it came to Switzerland because of climate change, it was actually most likely brought here by human transportation. Climate change however, allowing for warmer winters, favoured its settlement and efficient spreading in our regions.
Webfauna, the Swiss participatory science app
On top of collecting and managing information on Swiss fauna, info fauna offers everyone in Switzerland the opportunity to report fauna through their platform Webfauna [5]. Very easy to use, you just need to create an account and to fill in the different information requested by the platform, including uploading your pictures. All collected reports are verified and validated by the experts, such as Gilles Blandenier for the spiders. In case of doubt, reports will not be validated. Contrarily to the Nosferatu spider which is quite easy to identify, some species look alike and pictures of them might not be enough to identify them (not to mention blurry pictures). Validated reports are feeding the info fauna database, and are integrated into the maps once a year. When you click on a red dot on the map, you can even see the name of the person having made the report!
All reports are important, as they feed scientific research with data. The fact that Nosferatu is quite an impressive spider has meant that people have reported it a lot, enabling scientists to collect good enough data to track its evolution and spread. Ongoing reporting is also very important, even for well-known species, in order to monitor their evolution, and understand what may be affecting them, such as climate change or allochthonous species creating competition with local ones, and possibly leading to the disappearance of the latter. In such a case, scientific reports would be issued to the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, which would decide upon control/protection strategies, to be then implemented at cantonal level. One of the tools used by Switzerland for the protection of endangered species is the publication by the Federal Office for the Environment of red lists of species [6] to be protected, in accordance with the guidelines of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). To date, there is no red list for spiders in Switzerland, nor is the Nosferatu considered an invasive species, despite its spectacular spread in Switzerland in recent years.
I was far from imagining that my fear of spiders would lead me to become so knowledgeable about them. I still have way to go, as I’m not quite ready to hold a tarantula in my hand just like the RTS journalist David Nicole did for his report [7] (Dear David, you have all my admiration). I found the idea of participatory scientific data collection with Webfauna particularly rewarding, and very helpful in the desensitization process. Did I mention that you can choose to have your name displayed on the infofauna maps? So click on the red dots around Zürich on the map next year, and maybe you’ll see my name there! Or will it be yours?
[1] Je n’ai plus peur des araignées, A. Mokkedem and C. Rollard, Dunod 2018.
[2] While according to the English-language Wikipedia article the Nosferatu face can be seen in the black abdominal markings of the spider, the French version sees it in the arrangement of white hairs on a brown background on the front of the body. I'll let you choose what you see and where.
[3] Biologist, spider expert and author, with Sandro Marcacci of the book Araignées, guide de terrain, Guide de poche Rossolis 2022.
[4] https://lepus.infofauna.ch/carto/10340
[5] https://webfauna.cscf.ch/Webfauna/Welcome.do
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