When I was in High School, my parents moved us to farm in the middle of nowhere near Rio Vista TX. It was dry, hot and dead. I said OK, as long as I'm stuck out here I guess I'll study bugs.
I found that if you look in a spider's small top eyes and speak gently and softly to them, they will stop, turn their bodies and look at you with their two big front eyes. Then they crawl towards you. If you can manage your heebie jeebies they will hop on you and crawl up to your FACE. Proved this to guests more than once. Of course at that point you freak out, shake them off and squish them, but spiders are either inquisitive or friendly.
Bugs that had heads would generally turn at look at you (preying mantises are good for demonstrating this, with their evil triangle heads), but spiders are the only ones that would come towards you. Not one is a herbivore. Knew a guy that would feed his tarantula grasshoppers. A short stalk, a pounce, and you'd see the little white fangs come out and hear the crack of the grasshoppers carapace. Ew.
Still have a dent in the top of my foot where we believe a brown recluse got me and the flesh rotted off.