A man who keeps 1000 spiders in his home says he 'doesn't know what he'd do' without his eight-legged pets.
Ian Wileman got his first spider on his 15th birthday, and has been collecting the arachnids for over three decades since, according to the Liverpool Echo.
However, the teacher was left with just 60 of the animals as he struggled to come to terms with the loss of his 'beautiful' wife.
Primary school teacher Michelle Wileman died in March 2016 - just one week after Ian had pleaded her to stay off work when she caught flu.
He said: "When I was really not good, shortly after Michelle died, I actually went in the room and found a couple of them had died because I'd forgot to water them.
"I was really gutted, because obviously I wasn't in a great place, and then losing a couple of animals because I hadn't gone in and watered them properly, I just felt really guilty.
"I was in a situation where I thought, 'I've got to move them on'."
Five months later, Ian drove his son Billy up to Blackpool Pets and Aquatics so they could match their male with someone else's female for breeding.
But Billy realised this meant the end of their spider collection.
Ian said: "On the way home, Bill was - at the time, he was eight or nine - and he was really upset that there were going to be no more spiders.
"So I said, 'Oh, we'll get a couple more'."
The eight-legged friends have been a "huge part" of Ian's life for decades.
Spiders are the reason he's a teacher, and without them, he may never have met his wife.
In his early 20s, Ian was an iconic "animal man" who visited schools with spiders and the other animals he had at the time, taking his collection as far as Halifax, West Yorkshire.
A visit to the primary school he attended as a child in Speke planted the thought of going into teaching.
Ian said: "The teachers there just kept saying, 'You've got an attitude with these kids. The kids love you. Wouldn't you think about doing it full time?'
He did think about it, even more so after his life paused when he broke his right arm and dislocated his left elbow in a climbing accident.
Ian met Michelle in 2002 while they were both training to be teachers at Liverpool Hope University.
On their first day, he jokingly told Michelle he would marry her.
He said: "She was a beautiful, lovely, caring woman. She was everything to me, we were best friends."
When she died, Ian promised Michelle that he would raise their then-eight-year-old son Billy to be a man with good morals and ethics.
Ian added: "We spent quite a long time on our knees. Life was pretty dire for quite a long time.
"But these animals kind of give you something else, you know, you've got 1,000 lives in that room that need you to stay alive."
He added: "It's a big part of my life. I don't know what I'd do if I'd never had them."
And he gets to share that hobby with his boy Billy now.
One hundred of the spiders in the collection of 1,000 spiders across more than 60 species belong to Billy, who bought them with his own pocket money.
Ian said: "He's really, really keen on it.
"It's a big part of his life now as well, which shows in the fact that he's buying his own and growing his own. I don't go near it.
"The spiders he's bought out of his pocket money are his. I have nothing to do with them.
"He looks after them. He feeds them. He waters them. He pots them on when they need potting on.
"It's down to him to do that."
The dad and son keep their collection in a room heated between 24 and 26 degrees celsius.
Both spend hours watching the spiders, looking out for signs that they need feeding, or are shedding their skin, or are ready for breeding.
Ian said: "They all have absolutely incredible markings on them.
"It's like keeping little works of art.
"They are absolutely amazing things."
Ian finds it infuriating to see portrayals of spiders as scary creatures when, to him, they are "amazing and beautiful" and worthy of protection while their habitats are destroyed.
He said: "The worst species of spider out there that you're allowed to keep, I've got 100 of them in this house.
"And they've got medically significant venom, so if they bit you, it's going to hurt, you're going to be in pain.
"Nobody has ever, in the whole history of mankind, been killed by a tarantula bite."
Ian added: "There's no reason for anyone to say negative things about them. There are enough people scared of them."
Work and his son aside, Ian spends the "vast majority" of his time with spiders, finding solace in that room in his house.
He said: "A thousand animals take quite a significant chunk of your life to look after.
"But it's not a chore, and it never is a chore, because it's fascinating to be with them.
"They're amazing things. They're incredible."
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