Who created National Save a Spider Day and why is it on March 14?

The day was already being kept by March 14, 2011, when PETA published the earliest firmly dated reference to it, and Smithsonian Magazine covered it in 2013. No source names a founder, a founding year, or a reason this particular date was chosen.

Is Save a Spider Day the same as International Jumping Spider Day?

No, they are separate observances on separate dates. Save a Spider Day is March 14, International Jumping Spider Day is October 10, National Tarantula Appreciation Day is August 8, and National Spider-Man Day on August 1 is about the Marvel character.

Is an unexplained skin wound usually a spider bite?

Often not. In one emergency-department study of 182 patients who reported a spider bite, 156 were diagnosed with an infection instead, and the study measured what physicians diagnosed rather than whether a spider was present.

National Save a Spider Day

Next celebratedSunday, March 14, 2027

A single Kansas house gave up 2,055 brown recluse spiders, and the family living in it had never once been envenomated. March 14 argues for leaving yours where they are.

See how to celebrate

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Last updated September 5, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEMarch 14

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYAnimals

SUBCATEGORYWildlife

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

~2011

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The earliest dated reference is a 2011 PETA post.

No founder, founding organization, proclamation, or establishment record for National Save a Spider Day has been located. The earliest firmly dated reference found is a PETA post published on March 14, 2011, and Smithsonian Magazine covered the day on March 14, 2013 without naming an originator; both show the day was already being kept, not when or by whom it began.

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INTRO

Seven of 182 suspected spider bites were confirmed

National Save a Spider Day asks for one small, specific thing: that you leave the animal where it is. The strongest argument for doing that was not made by a conservation group. It came out of an emergency room.

Researchers spent 23 months logging patients who walked into one hospital emergency department blaming a spider. There were 182 of them. Physicians confirmed an actual spider bite in seven.

The largest group by far, 156 patients, was diagnosed with a skin or soft tissue infection instead. That is 85.7% of the people the study enrolled. The handful of confirmed bites came from black widows, in the cases where the species could be identified at all.

ORIGINS

Save a Spider Day history

INTRODUCTION

In July 1994 the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History opened an exhibition called Spiders! It ran live and mounted specimens beside interactive displays, a time-enhanced film of webs going up, and a section devoted to spider myths.

Its backer was Marvel Entertainment Group. The company behind Spider-Man had paid for a show about the real thing, and the exhibition later travelled to ten cities.

CHAPTER 01

The house with 2,055 spiders

In 2001 a family in Lenexa, Kansas let collectors work their house. The place had been built in the 1850s. The collectors removed 2,055 brown recluse spiders.

At least 400 were large enough to envenomate a person, the researchers conservatively estimated. The family had been living in the house for more than five years. Not one of them had ever been envenomated.

CHAPTER 02

Fear, finally measured

The fear itself has been measured, by entomologists who surveyed their own students. At Colorado State University, more than two thirds of an introductory class reported some measure of spider fear.

The scale ran from a little apprehensive to cannot stand being in their presence, and one sixth of the students sat at the top of it. What they named most often as the reason was bites, and the danger they believed came with them.

CHAPTER 03

A holiday with no paper trail

The observance itself leaves almost nothing behind. The earliest firmly dated reference anyone has found was published by PETA in 2011. Smithsonian Magazine wrote about the day two years later and named no originator either.

No proclamation, resolution, trademark or founding organization has surfaced in any archive searched. What the day has instead is the evidence it points at, much of it already published before the earliest mention of the observance anyone has found.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Smithsonian opens Spiders!

The National Museum of Natural History mounted an exhibition of live and mounted specimens, interactive displays and a section on spider myths, underwritten by Marvel Entertainment Group.

Kansas house yields 2,055 recluses

Vetter and Barger published the case of a single occupied home that produced 2,055 brown recluse spiders and not one envenomation.

Spider fear finally gets measured

Cranshaw surveyed a Colorado State University entomology class and found more than two thirds of students expressed some measure of spider fear.

Earliest dated reference to the day

A PETA post published on March 14 is the earliest firmly dated mention of the observance that has been located.

Smithsonian Magazine covers the day

The magazine ran a piece on March 14 quoting the Natural History Museum's own insect keeper and spider taxonomist.

First global estimate of spider predation

Nyffeler and Birkhofer estimated that the world's spiders kill 400 to 800 million metric tons of prey a year.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why National Save a Spider Day Matters

DIAGNOSIS

Outside a well-drawn band of states, a recluse bite is improbable.

Populations of the brown recluse run from southeastern Nebraska across to the southernmost strip of Ohio, south into Texas and east to northern Georgia and western South Carolina. The researchers who mapped that range argue physicians working outside it should require verification that a spider was involved before naming one.

ECOLOGY

Take the spiders out and the insects climb

The 2017 global estimate is supported by exclusion experiments, in which spiders were removed from research plots and the numbers of plant-eating insects and collembolans then rose significantly. Martin Nyffeler of the University of Basel, whose team produced the estimate, said spiders "make an essential contribution to maintaining the ecological balance of nature."

INSTITUTIONS

Scientific bodies build real programming around the date

The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History runs a public spider program for the day, and the Entomological Society of America keeps a reading collection assembled for it. A county forest preserve district and a Colorado invertebrate zoo mark the date too.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Save a Spider Day by the Numbers

~25M t: Combined weight of all spiders
54,084: Spider species described worldwide
324: Genuine recluses among 1,773 specimens
102: British spider species judged threatened

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Save a Spider Day

Spiders barely work the farms

The 2017 global estimate put forests and grasslands at more than 95% of the annual prey kill. Spiders in annual crop fields accounted for less than 2% of it.

Entomologists rank spiders second to last

Asked to rate 30 animals, 41 entomologists placed spiders 29th, just ahead of ticks. Most reported only mild dislike, but some scored in the range of clinically diagnosable phobias.

One spider lives mostly on plants

Bagheera kiplingi, a Central American jumping spider, eats the food bodies that acacias grow to pay their guardian ants. Those made up 91% of its diet in Mexico.

The hobo spider was quietly cleared

Researchers exposed hobo spiders to MRSA and found none of them carried or transferred it. They also reported that they could not substantiate the spider's involvement in human necrotic wounds.

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe National Save a Spider Day

Visit the Smithsonian program built for the day

The National Museum of Natural History runs a free drop-in session in its Q?rius education center, with spider and scorpion specimens and live tarantula feedings. Museum scientists spend the morning debunking common spider myths.

READ

Read the entomologists' own reading list

The Entomological Society of America keeps a collection assembled for the observance on its journals platform. It gathers the peer-reviewed work on bite misdiagnosis, recluse distribution and spider fear.

CHECK

Check what your local nature agency is running

Public land agencies mark the date with education work of their own. The Forest Preserve District of Will County published a piece for the day arguing the case for leaving spiders alone.

BROWSE

Browse the running census of the world's spiders

The Natural History Museum Bern maintains the World Spider Catalog, the authoritative record of every described species, genus and family. It is now in its twenty-seventh version.

SPEND

Spend an hour at an invertebrate zoo

Butterfly Pavilion in Colorado programs the same March 14 date under the name World Spider Day. The organization describes spiders as bio-indicators, whose population shifts signal the health of the habitats they live in.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Save a Spider?

1 / 8

In the emergency-department study, what were most patients reporting a spider bite actually diagnosed with?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no proclamation, resolution or legal recognition found, so it is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

18sources

14primary records

16independently dated

Primary records

The Journal of Emergency MedicineNovember 2011

"Spider Bite" Lesions are Usually Diagnosed as Skin and Soft-Tissue Infections

What 182 emergency patients who blamed a spider were actually diagnosed with.