CALGARY – The unprecedented finding in a recent scientific publication about the ingestion of arachnids by humans was discovered to be fundamentally flawed due to the inclusion of a well-known lunatic in the study’s sample.
“At first, we were awed by such an unexpected result. I mean, discovering that every person in North America eats almost 50,000 spiders a year creates all sorts of follow-up questions we were excited to explore,” said Dr. Craig Himel of the University of Northeast Calgary, “but when one of our R.A.s pointed out that one of the participants consumed over 750,000 spiders alone, we began to suspect that the results were skewed.”
Stanley the Amazing Spider-Eating Maniac was one out of 12,000 individuals followed by the study over the course of a year to determine how often people consume various invertebrates. However, he ended up being responsible for well over 99.96% of the spiders found to be consumed over the course of the year. While most participants were recorded only late at night on the assumption that bug-consumption universally occurs accidentally while asleep, Stanley attended with hours of self-recorded video irrefutably proving the vast quantities of spiders he ate throughout the day.
“He actually attended some of the in-person interviews with his own baggy of spiders that he munched on in the waiting room and then later in front of the researchers themselves,” said graduate student Norma Fleisch, “he kept making forced eye contact with us while screaming “Look! Look what I can do!! Witness!!!”
“He ate soooooooo many spiders. Just soooo many,” she continued.
Further investigations have shown that Stanley normally works as a self-employed roadside attraction where he consumes herculean numbers of spiders throughout the day, regardless of whether there are visitors to see him or not. He accepts no payment for his show, describing himself as an “Arachnalanthropist”.
“While we are disappointed at this now glaringly obvious error in our procedures, we did come away with one important takeaway,” said Dr. Himel, “and it’s that Stanley is a dangerous nutjob who is out there eating spiders for the sheer joy of it. Truly a madman.”
A follow-up study showing that every person punches an average of 12 babies a year has been shelved given its proximity to the release of Doug, the Baby-Punching Psycho from jail.
