If there’s a real Spider-Man, it’s probably Rod Crawford.

Crawford is the curator of arachnids for the Burke Museum on the campus of Washington State University in Seattle.

He’s created an expansive Web site designed to answer just about any question dealing with spiders. It includes what Crawford calls the “Spider Myths Site,” where he goes into great detail in debunking a host of fallacies, myths and what he calls “just plain weird stories” about spiders.

Some of them, from his site:

• Tarantulas are deadly to people

“Hollywood is squarely to blame for these spiders’ toxic-to-humans reputation,” Crawford claims. “Tarantulas are large, photogenic and easily handled, and therefore have been very widely used in horror and action-adventure movies.

“In reality, the venom of these largest-of-all-spiders generally has very low toxicity to humans. … The only health hazard posed by keeping pet tarantulas comes from the irritating chemicals on the hairs of the abdomen, which can cause skin rashes or inflammation of the eyes and nasal passages. To prevent such problems … keep tarantulas away from your face and wash your hands. Compared to common pets such as dogs, tarantulas are not dangerous at all.”

• Some spiders are deadly.

“There is no spider species anywhere that can properly be called deadly. I know of no species … capable of causing death in humans … even if untreated.”

• Arachnid is just a fancy name for spider.

“There are 11 orders of arachnids,” and they include scorpions, mites and ticks, harvestmen, solpugids and spiders among them.

• Daddylonglegs’ venom is the most deadly of all.

Daddylonglegs, writes Crawford, aren’t any more deadly than other arachnids and, in fact, aren’t spiders but rather harvestmen.

• In Middle East deserts there are “camel spiders” that anesthetize sleeping humans and eat large chunks of their flesh.

“This legend (widespread in Arab countries) … was disseminated to some degree by Gulf War veterans and … repeated by the uninformed narrator of at least one TV documentary.

“Camel spider is a common name for solpugids, large non-spider arachnids found in desert regions. Solpugids have no venom, not even an anesthetic, and are strictly predatory on smaller creatures.”