Students get cozy with spiders

[Mark]

The creepy and crawly can be good for you - at least that's the message that Dario Gutierrez preaches to sometimes squeamish students in Colombian schools.

The biologist brings his roving "Living Museum of Spiders" to schools around the country to explain the medicinal and environmental benefits of arachnids - and to let some of them crawl around on the pupils.

Fees collected from private schools also help finance his nonprofit institution dedicated to studying and cataloguing the country's spiders and scorpions. He says Colombia is known to have 700 species of spiders

Gutierrez told students at a school on Tuesday that some scorpion venom has been tested as a cancer treatment.

A student poses with a Xenesthis immanis tarantula on her face during an exhibition at a school in Bogota, Tuesday, March 10, 2009. Biologist Dario Gutierrez tours schools throughout Colombia teaching students the use of almost 300 species of arachnids in traditional medicine.
- William Fernando Martinez /AP Photo


Source: The State