This body butter at Sephora doesn’t exactly attract spiders, right?

I was just thinking about what I wanted for my birthday, which is coming up soon. And the only thing I miss in life is a lotion that makes my skin feel super hydrated And attracts Wolf spiders.

Luckily for me, my day might have come.

Beauty chain Sephora’s Reddit page was set ablaze this week by a one-star review of a new body butter sold on the site, claiming: “SMELL ATTRACT WOLF SPIDERS.”

“If you’re afraid of wolf spiders, beware of these lotions lol. I wanted to love them so bad, but one of the ingredients is like kryptonite to wolf spiders! If I put it on right away, one comes out,” the reviewer wrote, ending with, “Sorry for the disappointing review.”

You should regret it! Happy birthday to me!

The product, the Delícia Drench body butter, made by the Sol de Janeiro company, debuted at Sephora this month and retails for $48 per 8.1-ounce container. The Brazilian-inspired brand has been selling other body butters for years without incident, with the Bom Dia Bright and Brazilian Bum Bum variants among the chain’s bestsellers.

But not long after the new scent was released, several spin-related reviews appeared on Sephora’s website. Investigators on Reddit and other social media tried to find out whether the claims could be substantiated.

A widely shared message confidently claimed that there was a scientific reason the body butter attracted spiders. “Combine farnesyl acetate with hexadecyl acetate in the right dosage and it could bring all the thirsty boy spiders to your garden,” it said, referring to apparently common ingredients in skin care products.

The post was shared more than 15,000 times, prompting Sol de Janeiro to boldly weigh in and debunk these claims.

“We didn’t think we’d turn 2023 into an urban legend,” the company wrote in an Instagram story post on Friday. “All of our products, including our new Delicia Drench Body Butter and the upcoming Cheirosa 59 Perfume Mist, are free of farnesyl acetate, diisobutyl phthalate and hexadecyl acetate.”

The statement continued: “So while they may attract a lot of attention from humans, they won’t from arachnids (even though we love all the creatures in Sol de Janeiro).”

Sephora did not respond to a request for comment.

While it’s not clear how many of the reviewers took the possibility seriously, the comments and jokes haven’t stopped: One reviewer on Friday afternoon called the lotion “Grade A – unless a Wolf Spider starts stalking me.”

One Reddit user said they conducted a days-long experiment to see if the lotion actually attracted spiders. After a day they reported, ‘I think it actually involves spiders? I saw eight spiders, we rarely have spiders at work.”

Online, the jokes came quickly, with one commenter saying they would immediately buy the cream for their in-laws, while another posted their husband’s parodied line about the lotion on the website. melody of the original Cartoon theme ‘Spider-Man’.

For those of us who are cool with spiders, bad news: Scientists say this is nothing more than a fun internet meme.

Wolf spiders, scientifically known as Lycosidae, are dark-colored arachnids with long, lean legs. They typically range from a quarter inch to 1 inch in size, and their bites pose no danger to most people.

Floyd W. Shockley, chairman of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s Entomology Collections Committee, said the memes showed a “glaring lack of understanding about the diversity of Wolf spiders.”

“It is VERY unlikely that the skin cream company, by random chance, combined enough things in just the right proportion to mimic a spider compound,” said Dr. Shockley in an email.

As for the anecdotal stories about the spiders crawling towards the lotion?

“What’s more likely, given the time of year when all this is happening, is that people are simply noticing more wolf spiders indoors than normal because the outside temperature has dropped below the level they’re comfortable with,” he said. “Wolves spiders prefer to hunt and live outside, but when it gets cold they come inside to hibernate, increasing the chance of a spider-human interaction.”

Gustavo Hormiga, professor of biology at George Washington University, agrees.

Although sex pheromones have been documented for spiders, “as an attractant it only works for your own species,” he said in an email.

“Identifying and chemically characterizing a pheromone takes a lot of hard work, and each species has its own unique chemical cocktail (like spider venom),” said Dr. Hormiga. “If the story had an element of initial credibility, the chemicals in the cream would (by chance alone) only attract adult males of a single species.”

They generally would not attract wolf spiders, as there are at least 2,500 such species.

“It seems extremely unlikely that a spider would be interested in crawling on a human (or any mammal),” said Dr. Hormiga.

Well, not with that attitude. I’ll have to settle for a Yankee Candle or something.