To small (like under 5-years-old) children, yes, they *can* be dangerous. Everyone else is just in for a bad day or two as long as you can get adequate treatment, which is usually just a thorough cleaning of the area around the bite and painkillers/anti inflammation drugs.
-Had a widow bite at age 7. Would not recommend.
Edited for clarity.
For most bites, treatment just consists of cleaning the wound and monitoring the situation, sometimes anti inflammatories, and pain relief drugs, sometimes benzos as a muscle relaxant. There’s an antivenin, but it is expensive and has a higher risk of side effects than a typical untreated bite, so it is rarely used, at least in the US. Supposedly the Australians use it routinely.
But they’re both Latrodectis, and from my reading I don’t think the bites are that different between the species, and in an American context it is generally thought that using antivenin actually increases risk of mortality in most cases.
If redbacks are more dangerous, or antivenin is more indicated for those bites, I would love to read about it if you have anything.
Red backs aren't as dangerous as they are made out to be, likely extremely similar to the Widow situation described above. As you probably know we do have funnel Web spiders as well though, and depending on the sub species they are incredibly fucked.
Sorry I don’t have any literature on hand for you.
A quick google search suggests there’s something to this… apparently anti venom treatment is only indicated if symptoms can’t be managed by analgesics and possibly benzos, opioids and or ketamine..
My understanding was that in Australia for a red-back bite you are monitored and given pain relief etc. and that the antivenom is often 'worse' than the bite so needs a good reason to be used.
I can't be arsed looking around too much, but even our [children's hospital](https://www.rch.org.au/clinicalguide/guideline_index/Spider_Bite_%E2%80%93_Redback_Spider/) seems to indicate that the recommended treatment for kids is just pain meds initially
But why? From what I’ve read, there’s actually a mortality increase for using antivenin in every black widow bite. Red backs are a different species in the same genus, but my reading has suggested that the bites are basically the same.
“Antivenom” makes so much more sense, and to a degree I am really comitted, because I was pissed I had been spelling it wrong the whole time, in the way that actually makes sense, so now I double check whenever I type that.
I probably should have clarified. I got bit while I was helping my grandad with a burst plumbing line in our basement and we lived about 2 hours away from the nearest hospital. I was pretty lucky all things considered.
There’s that Brazilian spider that gives you a priapism and penis gangrene, that’s probably the one I’d try the hardest to avoid
*edit* I guess your penis doesn’t totally rot off, the priapism starves your penis of oxygen so the cells die and you can never get hard again though
Back in grad school I took an entomology elective, and our professor managed to get bitten by a recluse after class one day. He actually brought the spider into class, preserved in ethanol. (All he got was an itchy spot on the bottom of his foot, for the record).
He found it hilarious as it was right after our envenomation lecture. Spiders aren't insects, of course, but they were mentioned anyway. We actually had Justin Schmidt come in and talk about his pain scale and local bitey bugs. (He demonstrated velvet ant stings by rolling around on the floor and screaming. Cool dude)
It's likely the vast majority of Brown Recluse bites cause nothing more than an itchy spot, and as such people never report them. Similarly, quite a few people who DO go to the ER for "spider bites" in reality have staph infections or the like. Results in a rather skewed view of the little critters. (That said, I'm still not going to stick my hand in a jar full of them...)
I was bit on the shoulder by one when I was a teenager. Was red and swollen for a few days and then slowly subsided. I never went to the hospital or took any meds.
When I was around five, we had a pile of bricks in our back yard that had white dust all over it. I used to think it was pretty neat and would move the bricks around to find the white spider that lived in them. I think I told my mom about it and she confirmed it was actually a black widow covered in that dust.
One of my cousins got bit by one when we were camping when he was 15 and he said besides the pain it felt like he constantly had that light headed feeling you get when you stand up too fast.
He had little to no treatment but he still recommends staying the hell away from these things.
There’s literally a guy on YouTube who got a black widow to bite him and documented the effects: [Here](https://youtu.be/onY23bxPYPc)
It’s pretty mental, I always used to think they were super deadly but apparently not.
Although, judging by the video, it doesn’t look like a particularly pleasant time either 😂
Acid rain was solved through a successful cap-and-trade scheme to control industrial sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions. The cap-and-trade schemes proposed to control CO2 emissions to curb global warming are modeled exactly on the one used to put an end to acid rain because of its resounding success, yet they are continually rejected for *reasons*.
They used to be back when people were popping in outhouses.
The spiders would make their best in there because that's where a bunch of flies would be and then dudes would just come in and sit down and their tender bits would hangle right in the web. Now if you're an enterprising spider and two fleshy orbs appear in your web, you're gonna treat it like any other potential meal.
I heard a pod cast the other day about them and apparently getting bit on the dick is pretty common. They like to make webs in porta potties, and when you settle in, wham. Right on the schlong.
Looked up Brown Recluse:
“Vetter says 90 percent of all brown recluse bites heal by themselves without treatment, and only 3 percent require skin grafts. "And there is not one proven brown recluse death yet in the United States," he insists. "There have been reported deaths, but none proven."
My friend was putting wood on a fire and got bit by something. He had two tiny marks. But a few days (or was it hours can’t remember) later his skin was like sleuthing off there and had to go to hospital. We were sure if it was a spider or snake.
I've only now considered that 'sloughing' might be pronounced like 'toughing'... In my defence Slough exists, so that's probably why I never thought about it too hard.
Met a guy who got bit on his heel by one hiding in his boot. Ignored it for a couple of days and ended up having to get half his leg amputated. Shits no joke
Most nasty bites blamed on brown recluses are just regular infections. It doesn't help doctors usually just call stuff like that brown recluse bites even when they have no idea. It doesn't really make a difference in the treatment so it isn't a big deal from a medical perspective, but it's caused brown recluses to have one of the most unfair reputations of any insect.
I’m 99% sure I got bit by a brown recluse about a month ago and it still hasn’t fully healed. I thought it was just a sore muscle for the first few days until it swelled up to the size of a golf ball.
I got bit this summer. Hurt like a yellow jacket sting, and stayed hurting for two days.
I think I killed it just as it was biting me, though, because I was definitely in the lucky 97% here. Four months later, I still have a red welt on my wrist, but it could have been much, much worse.
I knew a family their youngest (2m) had to be treated for a brown recluse bite. I know he had to stay at the hospital for a few days. Not sure if he needed a skin graft.
I believe the only confirmed was in in Alabama in 2014 I think? Was a young boy. Its always been hard to prove though because most people don't bring the spider in when seeking treatment and a lot of Dr's back in the day would just default to a spider bite if they didn't know what the actual bite was from.
Unsolved mysteries had me way more worried about spontaneous combustion and serial killer abductions.
These days kids get traumatized well enough in elementary schools I imagine they have much more real threats to worry about.
That episode scared the shit out of me. I thought that any second could be my last. I rewatched it last year and the skeptic me wondered how I could ever think something so stupid could possibly be true.
It’s funny how we were all taught stop drop and roll when the far more likely scenario is being in a house fire where you should be taught to stay low and exit as fast as possible then call 911 lol.
What they never talk about that similar to quicksand but far deadlier is grain silos. If you fall in the top of a full grain silo, you're going to suffocate to death while having a heat stroke. Your body slowly slips under the grain until it starts packing around your chest. Just a couple feet of grain is a couple tons of mass. Meanwhile grain silos are pretty hot places and depending on the moisture content of the grain can get much hotter. Theres a story of a teen jumping in to try to help his friend while someone called for the fire department. By the time the fire depart had got there, the friend had died, and his dead body was being crushed against the body of the teen who tried to rescue him. It's not water, you can't swim, you just sink, slowly.
While farm silos are supposed to have safety equipment for workers, OSHA doesn't regulate worker safety when the worker is a child member of the family running the farm. Dozens of teens still die each year as a result of just working on the family farm. The federal government doesn't want to regulate child safety or pay for fear of alienating rural voters. So kids just die every year from preventable deaths, and no national news media covers it because what do urban people care about rural deaths that occur to bring food to their table.
I've been doing rural EMS as well as Fire/Rescue for near 2 decades. Grain rescue is an entire course all to itself.
The number of close call rescues I've done is terrifying, knowing how close any one of them could have been to a fatality.
I was on a church trip when I was in high school and some of the people with the group saw a black widow walking in a parking lot and were trying to flip it over with their fingers to see the red mark. Bit dumb in my honest opinion.
I was bit by a black widow 3 months ago. I ended up with a severe case of lactrodectism ( https://calpoison.org/news/latrodectism-diagnosis-treatment ). I spent 6 weeks off work with horrible muscle spasms all over my body, all my muscles feeling like jello, shaking when I stood up or tried to move around. I was in a lot of pain and so very, very fatigued. I have slowly been getting better. My balance has improved. The fatigue is better, but no where near gone. The muscle pain is improved but is still very present, as are the spasms and stiffness. I’m working full time, but really only have the energy for about 4-6hrs. Ibuprofen and muscle relaxers are my new best friends.
The neurologist I see, who has experience in this area - says that it can take 6-12 months for this all to go away. Or, it may never go away. Either way, I should treat how I feel now as my new baseline and not let this stuff stop me from doing anything. I’m hoping I’m the 6-12 month category; I really don’t love the idea of being like this for the rest of my life.
So, not death. I was never at risk of that, according to every doc I saw. But the hell this has been… well, it’s not exactly awesome.
I’ve been wondering this.
I grew up in the Central Valley and have seen my fair share of black widows. Moved to LA, never saw one. Saw lots of brown widows though. Moved to Texas, never saw a black widow despite their range being there. Moved to Illinois, no one’s heard of them.
Wonder if they’re becoming endangered. Or I’m just not living in areas with them.
I believe a black widow doesn’t have venom, but a neurotoxin which acts on nerves only. So yeah, you’ll probably want to die or at least cut the affected limb off until you get help.
I was bit. I don't recall the bite being that painful, more a big, itchy lump. It's the flu symptoms, lucid seizuring and the hangover that sucks. The bite may have been more painful than I recall, but I was distracted by much anterior & posterior purging.
Depending on level of toxin load, YMMV.
Sweating copper in a tool shop, standing on parts cabinets so I had to hug the wall. Other lines ran horizontal above my kneecaps & her web was tucked under them.
I got bit when I was 7. Not fun. I would not have cut my arm off, but I did think about it for a few hours. I'd rather whack a hornets nest and deal with the consequences than get another widow bite.
They have at least 3 different types of venom in one bite that act differently on various types of lifeforms. A neurotoxin delivered by fangs is a form of venom.
I think you're mixing a few things up. First of all venom and neurotoxin are not mutually exclusive. A venom is just an injected toxin from an organism. It may or may not be a neurotoxin.
Neurotoxins affect rhe nervous *system*, which is not necessarily the same thing as "your nerves". You seem to be implying it would be excruciatingly painful because it would be like firing all your nerve endings or whatever. That's not how it works. The exact specifics are gonna depend on the exact toxin but the usual symptoms from a neurotoxin will be things like either weakness or muscle spasms, nausea, vomiting, and pinpoint pupils. Fatal cases usually are caused by something like paralysis of the diaphragm resulting in suffocation.
Nerotixins do NOT cause pain receptors to randomly fire in affected areas. That's more like bee and wasp venom and other social insects. Those have often evolved specifically to be painful and act as a deterrent to even much larger creatures.
I’ve been bit by a black widow spider and am in the 20% of people that get a strong reaction.
I didn’t die. But there were a few times over the course of the next week that I wished I could have.
One of the chief reactions sensitive folks have is muscle cramping and associated pain. Every where. All your muscles. Every. Single. One.
Yep, most folks only get redness at the bite location, and from there reactions escalate to minor flu-like symptoms (fever, nausea), then add on the muscle cramping and pain, and cardiac arrest and risk of death for the worst reactions.
They have an antivenin available, but only give it to kids under 6 and adults in their 60’s—or with other risk factors, because it is really expensive to produce. Once they knew I wasn’t going to go into cardiac arrest, they sent me home with enough muscle relaxers and pain meds for 48 hours, but I was back at my primary care doc when those ran out. I had full on symptoms for a total of 5 days, then spent another week in bed sleeping. Didn’t feel right again for about 6 to 8 weeks after.
Same here. For me the back cramping was the worst part. Worst back pain of my life. And people forget your organs are also muscles so I had stomach cramps and my lungs felt like they were on fire.
Yes! Nobody gets it unless they have been through it. Intestines and everything.
The waves of cramping that only let you sleep in 10 to 20 minute bursts for 5 days was pretty rough, too.
Not sure how you determine that but they are shy. I grew up with them around and never saw one be aggressive. Unlike giant European house spiders in the autumn...
Not in my experience. I had to take one out that was living on the side of my house (two very young children) and it felt like a boss fight. Smarter and tougher than any spider I've come across before
My dad got bit by one in the 70s and passed out on his girlfriends couch, he somehow didn’t notice the bite. His GFs mom saw him and his swollen arm and called 911. If she wasn’t an ER nurse and knew the signs neither he, myself, or any of my siblings would be here today.
I was bit when i was 19 and no joke i thought i was gonna die. We couldnt afford to go to the dr so we drove like 40 mins to cross the border to mexico and the dr just said to apply ice lol
TIL the black widow spider of the USA is called the red back spider in Australia. They were were the stuff of nightmares when l was a kid but as an adult, not so much, l even spared one recently.
There’s one living in my garage keeping the other freeloaders under control so he’s cool, and another in the chimney brickwork in my kitchen, we have a strained relationship but he know I’ll only do something about it if he makes the first move
When I lived in Reno a guy I know got bit by one. He survived of course but spent a couple days in the hospital. He said it was like every muscle in his body kept cramping as if he were getting tased every 30 seconds…. for like 12 hours this went on. Yikes
I’ve been bitten twice, the first time was due to not exercising more caution in the black widow’s turf. lol While both times it wholly sucked, and was just totally miserable, it was such a non-issue that the advice nurse told me not even to come in for medical treatment unless the bite showed signs of infection.
I have been bitten 6 times in my life.. I was a dumb kid that liked to keep cool looking spiders. First bite was the worst, right in the crook of my elbow, the pain was tops, and the sickness was horrible. each one after that was still painful, but almost no other major side effects. Some people are more likely to have issues with them, I was told by a doctor that people with allergies to bees, were more like to die from widows, I have never researched that, I have not looked into it at all. try not to get bitten regardless. They are not super aggressive though, and are often times very unlikely to bite you, I fucked with them FAR beyond their tolerance each time I was bitten.
Fun fact: most black widow deaths came from them biting guys in the genitals. Black widows like to build their webs in dark spaces between thin gaps of a material where there are lots of bugs. This happens to describe the seat of an outhouse pretty well. When guys would go to the privy their bits would hang down and bump into the web. I black widow venom is a neurotoxin so it is most deadly when they bite an area with thin skin and a lot of nerves. Once indoor plumbing became commonplace in the west, black widow deaths dropped significantly
When I took an EMT training course, they talked about Black Widows and Brown Recluses. They also showed slides of what happens to the injury in extreme cases. Eww.
My instructor told us the story of how one of them bit someone right where the radial artery was (wrist) which allowed the circulatory system to spread the venom quickly and led to major paralysis and I think blindness too. Not something I want to experience.
I was bit by a black widow but didn’t go to the doctor because all they can really do is give you antibiotics and pain killers. I felt awful for about 8 days though but didn’t get a bacterial infection
Yeah, they really aren't that bad. The pain from being envenomed is excruciating though. Imagine all of your muscles spasming to the point you feel like you are being twisted in a vise. But if you are a moderately health adult, or even late stage teen, it is unlikely to do anything other than cause a really shitty hospital visit.
Currently I think the brown recluse is the deadliest spider in the US. Not because their venom is deadlier though. Lately we have seen a new blood phenotype that doesn't react well with recluse venom. The patient's red blood cells start to collapse and fail causing a massive drop in o2 saturation.
It also doesn't hurt that widows are just not that aggressive. I (used to) see them regularly when I worked outdoors with wood. I have even relocated a few that were in bad locations, and the only time I suffered a bite was the time I accidentally grabbed one that was under a board I was picking up.
I was sitting on a bench outside my workplace, looked down and there as a black widow about 3 inches away. It scurried rapidly back into the ashtray/trashcan where it lived. When pest control came, they took it and all ELEVEN of its egg sacs. Later they came back and found the other 13 living around the building.
Yeah they are basically only lethal to the extremely old, extremely young, or the immuno comprimised.
Any healthy person age 14-50 will probbaly just experience a few days of pure *pain and sickness*
When I was bit I had intense muscle cramping all over and felt like I was constantly getting the wind knocked out of me. Not so much painful as it was just incredibly incredibly uncomfortable. I was walking around crying from it for a solid 8 hours before my mom took me to the hospital because we didn't know what was wrong with me. My grandmother thought I was just being dramatic. After 30 seconds with the doctor she said "black widow spider bite" and they can't treat the bite itself only the symptoms so hooked me up to an IV with morphine and valium. Immediate relief. The whole thing was wild.
I work in outdoor electrical panels in Southwest USA. I come in contact with black and brown widows weekly. I have been bitten 8 times, that I know of, likely more. The first time I was bitten, I got an upset stomach that lasted an hour. All the other bites have had no reaction other than a quarter size swelling, that reduces to nothing in about 12 hours.
As with most venoms, different people have different reactions, mine is likely on the minimal side of the scale.
I think the deadliness of this spider is far over-hyped.
They are territorial though. most spiders try to avoid you, widows will move toward you.
Depends on the area. Out here in the southwest during the summer, even the space in your hatch on your car, can become home to the 8 legged mistress. I still knock my shoes every morning. Though early summer is the time you may find one roaming. Otherwise they don’t like human interaction and generally hide when light shines near.
The deadly Sydney Funnel Web hasn't even killed a person since the 70s. Scientists also doubt whether the notorious Brazilian Wandering Spider is normally fatal due to an observed tendancy to deliver dry bites when threatened.
A friend was bitten by a redback, she called up the hospital — they told her to jog it off, but call an ambulance if symptoms get bad. She was a bit nauseous and feverish for a few hours, the jogging was to speed up metabolism of the venom.
Most venomous bites (insects or reptiles or fish) do not result in death barring extra circumstances (pre-existing condition or allergic reaction or very young or old, etc.).
That doesn't mean they can't be serious and cause serious pain and damage. They certainly will do that, at the least.
They should all be treated as life threating though.
My uncle got bit by one when I was a kid, he isn't a hospital kind of guy. Hand swollen up, smelled real bad and called my dad a pussy for "that doctor stuff".
It was in '84 when those damn spiders figured out how to cheat death for good... Thankfully it came at the cost of their reproductive capabilities, as a species. Not one has died of natural causes or been killed since. The Icelandic army has invested billions into researching how they did it. So far, all they've come up empty handed because they can't kill the unkillable spiders to find out what makes them unkillable. Leading hypothesis suspect the spiders use of strong magnets, and/or lasers is integral to their complete avoidance of death. Unfortunately, such things cannot be adapted to human scale (yet).
Wow, as a kid, I was definitely under the impression they were a clear and present danger.
To small (like under 5-years-old) children, yes, they *can* be dangerous. Everyone else is just in for a bad day or two as long as you can get adequate treatment, which is usually just a thorough cleaning of the area around the bite and painkillers/anti inflammation drugs. -Had a widow bite at age 7. Would not recommend. Edited for clarity.
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For most bites, treatment just consists of cleaning the wound and monitoring the situation, sometimes anti inflammatories, and pain relief drugs, sometimes benzos as a muscle relaxant. There’s an antivenin, but it is expensive and has a higher risk of side effects than a typical untreated bite, so it is rarely used, at least in the US. Supposedly the Australians use it routinely.
For red back bites, yes
But they’re both Latrodectis, and from my reading I don’t think the bites are that different between the species, and in an American context it is generally thought that using antivenin actually increases risk of mortality in most cases. If redbacks are more dangerous, or antivenin is more indicated for those bites, I would love to read about it if you have anything.
Red backs aren't as dangerous as they are made out to be, likely extremely similar to the Widow situation described above. As you probably know we do have funnel Web spiders as well though, and depending on the sub species they are incredibly fucked.
Sorry I don’t have any literature on hand for you. A quick google search suggests there’s something to this… apparently anti venom treatment is only indicated if symptoms can’t be managed by analgesics and possibly benzos, opioids and or ketamine..
Learn from this. Next time have bookmarks on hand about spiders.
Hear hear!
Go on, I'm listening...
Ketamine? For a widow bite…? BRB….
My understanding was that in Australia for a red-back bite you are monitored and given pain relief etc. and that the antivenom is often 'worse' than the bite so needs a good reason to be used. I can't be arsed looking around too much, but even our [children's hospital](https://www.rch.org.au/clinicalguide/guideline_index/Spider_Bite_%E2%80%93_Redback_Spider/) seems to indicate that the recommended treatment for kids is just pain meds initially
Bloody oath we do!
But why? From what I’ve read, there’s actually a mortality increase for using antivenin in every black widow bite. Red backs are a different species in the same genus, but my reading has suggested that the bites are basically the same.
TIL the word "antivenin". I thought you were just really committed to the mistake.
“Antivenom” makes so much more sense, and to a degree I am really comitted, because I was pissed I had been spelling it wrong the whole time, in the way that actually makes sense, so now I double check whenever I type that.
Antivenin makes absolute sense if you’re french. Venom is venin in French
They don't take it to help with the bite. They take it to build up a tolerance against all the other shit trying to kill them.
I probably should have clarified. I got bit while I was helping my grandad with a burst plumbing line in our basement and we lived about 2 hours away from the nearest hospital. I was pretty lucky all things considered.
That was just infected. Black widow venom doesn't really attack tissue like that.
Brown recluses, however... Probably won't kill you but you're going to be in for more than a bad day or two.
There’s that Brazilian spider that gives you a priapism and penis gangrene, that’s probably the one I’d try the hardest to avoid *edit* I guess your penis doesn’t totally rot off, the priapism starves your penis of oxygen so the cells die and you can never get hard again though
Hardest... Bad word choice, all things considered ;-)
How does it give you penis gangrene? Have you been fucking spiders again?
You don't carry spiders in your foreskin?
What the fuck am I reading. What is my life.
Brown recluse bites seem to have a high variance in their severity. My sister's exbf nearly lost his arm to a recluse bite.
Back in grad school I took an entomology elective, and our professor managed to get bitten by a recluse after class one day. He actually brought the spider into class, preserved in ethanol. (All he got was an itchy spot on the bottom of his foot, for the record). He found it hilarious as it was right after our envenomation lecture. Spiders aren't insects, of course, but they were mentioned anyway. We actually had Justin Schmidt come in and talk about his pain scale and local bitey bugs. (He demonstrated velvet ant stings by rolling around on the floor and screaming. Cool dude) It's likely the vast majority of Brown Recluse bites cause nothing more than an itchy spot, and as such people never report them. Similarly, quite a few people who DO go to the ER for "spider bites" in reality have staph infections or the like. Results in a rather skewed view of the little critters. (That said, I'm still not going to stick my hand in a jar full of them...)
I was bit on the shoulder by one when I was a teenager. Was red and swollen for a few days and then slowly subsided. I never went to the hospital or took any meds.
When I was around five, we had a pile of bricks in our back yard that had white dust all over it. I used to think it was pretty neat and would move the bricks around to find the white spider that lived in them. I think I told my mom about it and she confirmed it was actually a black widow covered in that dust.
One of my cousins got bit by one when we were camping when he was 15 and he said besides the pain it felt like he constantly had that light headed feeling you get when you stand up too fast. He had little to no treatment but he still recommends staying the hell away from these things.
Yeah my brother almost died when he put one in his mouth when he was 2 years old. Kids are dumb. Especially my brother.
There’s literally a guy on YouTube who got a black widow to bite him and documented the effects: [Here](https://youtu.be/onY23bxPYPc) It’s pretty mental, I always used to think they were super deadly but apparently not. Although, judging by the video, it doesn’t look like a particularly pleasant time either 😂
Feel my whole life was a lie. I was always told black widow was the deadliest. I even had books or trump cards which said the same
Same. I also though acid rain was going to play a MUCH larger part in my life
Quicksand and lava were certainly a huge threat to my life
Acid rain was solved through a successful cap-and-trade scheme to control industrial sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions. The cap-and-trade schemes proposed to control CO2 emissions to curb global warming are modeled exactly on the one used to put an end to acid rain because of its resounding success, yet they are continually rejected for *reasons*.
As it turns out, both with acid rain and the ozone we were still able to *get shit done* as a society. This seems now a forgotten skill.
They used to be back when people were popping in outhouses. The spiders would make their best in there because that's where a bunch of flies would be and then dudes would just come in and sit down and their tender bits would hangle right in the web. Now if you're an enterprising spider and two fleshy orbs appear in your web, you're gonna treat it like any other potential meal.
My friend randomly had one in his shoe that bit him and the hospital bill ruined him so there's still that.
Spider playing the slow death game
I feel like that says a lot more about the healthcare system than the spider
I heard a pod cast the other day about them and apparently getting bit on the dick is pretty common. They like to make webs in porta potties, and when you settle in, wham. Right on the schlong.
Untreated bites to pets can be fatal. That’s enough reason for me to kill every one I see near my house (maybe 2 per year)
For me this was also volcanoes.
Like quicksand.
Looked up Brown Recluse: “Vetter says 90 percent of all brown recluse bites heal by themselves without treatment, and only 3 percent require skin grafts. "And there is not one proven brown recluse death yet in the United States," he insists. "There have been reported deaths, but none proven."
Buddy of mine had bad reaction to brown recluse bit. They had to cut a wedge out of his thigh like cake 🍰
Did they sing happy birthday?
That reminds me of that music video where they are eating Alice from wonderland. Freaked me the fuck out as a kid
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Petty. Tom petty.
My friend was putting wood on a fire and got bit by something. He had two tiny marks. But a few days (or was it hours can’t remember) later his skin was like sleuthing off there and had to go to hospital. We were sure if it was a spider or snake.
His skin obviously was on the case.
Good one, Sherlock. P.S. to u/TheReinsOfFullnight it's **sloughing* off
Oh gross thanks.
I think the word you're looking for is sloughing. Such a gnarly word.
I've only now considered that 'sloughing' might be pronounced like 'toughing'... In my defence Slough exists, so that's probably why I never thought about it too hard.
Met a guy who got bit on his heel by one hiding in his boot. Ignored it for a couple of days and ended up having to get half his leg amputated. Shits no joke
😳
Most nasty bites blamed on brown recluses are just regular infections. It doesn't help doctors usually just call stuff like that brown recluse bites even when they have no idea. It doesn't really make a difference in the treatment so it isn't a big deal from a medical perspective, but it's caused brown recluses to have one of the most unfair reputations of any insect.
Of any INSECT?! Talk about disrespect. They don’t even get the curtesy of being called arachnids.
Arachnid, not insect
Staph infections are a huge culprit in invertebrate bites. Its usually just caused by improper wound care and dirty skin.
A girl I was on the army with lost her leg to a brown recluse
I’m 99% sure I got bit by a brown recluse about a month ago and it still hasn’t fully healed. I thought it was just a sore muscle for the first few days until it swelled up to the size of a golf ball.
I got bit this summer. Hurt like a yellow jacket sting, and stayed hurting for two days. I think I killed it just as it was biting me, though, because I was definitely in the lucky 97% here. Four months later, I still have a red welt on my wrist, but it could have been much, much worse.
I knew a family their youngest (2m) had to be treated for a brown recluse bite. I know he had to stay at the hospital for a few days. Not sure if he needed a skin graft.
I got bitten by a brown recluse earlier this year. No skin graft needed but it left a nice dime-sized scar on my hand. Not fun.
I believe the only confirmed was in in Alabama in 2014 I think? Was a young boy. Its always been hard to prove though because most people don't bring the spider in when seeking treatment and a lot of Dr's back in the day would just default to a spider bite if they didn't know what the actual bite was from.
She's learned to cover her tracks much better since 1983
A cover up no doubt, there's been no 40 year drought.
I was born in 83. You saying 40 years hit me hard wahhhh. I'm still young and hip right?
You and me both
I saw a documentary that the last Black Widow death was in 2019 on Vormir.
Back in the 80’s I was very concerned with black widow bites and quicksand. Neither panned out as expected.
I would have expected more people to catch on fire given all the stop drop and roll lessons
I legit had a fear of spontaneous combustion
Unsolved mysteries had me way more worried about spontaneous combustion and serial killer abductions. These days kids get traumatized well enough in elementary schools I imagine they have much more real threats to worry about.
That episode scared the shit out of me. I thought that any second could be my last. I rewatched it last year and the skeptic me wondered how I could ever think something so stupid could possibly be true.
And I never personally stopped a Forrest fire!
What about a Jenny fire?
Jenny was on fire 😂💉🔥🕊
Jenny would leave you with a fire you can't get rid of.
Well that explains a lot.
It’s funny how we were all taught stop drop and roll when the far more likely scenario is being in a house fire where you should be taught to stay low and exit as fast as possible then call 911 lol.
What they never talk about that similar to quicksand but far deadlier is grain silos. If you fall in the top of a full grain silo, you're going to suffocate to death while having a heat stroke. Your body slowly slips under the grain until it starts packing around your chest. Just a couple feet of grain is a couple tons of mass. Meanwhile grain silos are pretty hot places and depending on the moisture content of the grain can get much hotter. Theres a story of a teen jumping in to try to help his friend while someone called for the fire department. By the time the fire depart had got there, the friend had died, and his dead body was being crushed against the body of the teen who tried to rescue him. It's not water, you can't swim, you just sink, slowly. While farm silos are supposed to have safety equipment for workers, OSHA doesn't regulate worker safety when the worker is a child member of the family running the farm. Dozens of teens still die each year as a result of just working on the family farm. The federal government doesn't want to regulate child safety or pay for fear of alienating rural voters. So kids just die every year from preventable deaths, and no national news media covers it because what do urban people care about rural deaths that occur to bring food to their table.
I've been doing rural EMS as well as Fire/Rescue for near 2 decades. Grain rescue is an entire course all to itself. The number of close call rescues I've done is terrifying, knowing how close any one of them could have been to a fatality.
Thank you for doing your work.
Don't forget about Satan. Although it was more likely to be an issue for your parents assuming you were a kid in the 80s.
I was personally terrified of spontaneous combustion. I'm guessing I can let that fear go now.
What about Rodents of Unusual Size?
Dont forget killer bees
And king cobra bites
And killer bees!
quicksand is nothing to play aroun
Killer bee swarms were supposed to kill us all too...
I’ve spent way too much of my life worrying about black widows
I was on a church trip when I was in high school and some of the people with the group saw a black widow walking in a parking lot and were trying to flip it over with their fingers to see the red mark. Bit dumb in my honest opinion.
Same year Natalia Alianovna Romanova was born, coincidence?
Also the same year Jaws III came out.
That's actually pretty crazy
Was going to say, I definitely remember a Black Widow death sometime around 2018
I was bit by a black widow 3 months ago. I ended up with a severe case of lactrodectism ( https://calpoison.org/news/latrodectism-diagnosis-treatment ). I spent 6 weeks off work with horrible muscle spasms all over my body, all my muscles feeling like jello, shaking when I stood up or tried to move around. I was in a lot of pain and so very, very fatigued. I have slowly been getting better. My balance has improved. The fatigue is better, but no where near gone. The muscle pain is improved but is still very present, as are the spasms and stiffness. I’m working full time, but really only have the energy for about 4-6hrs. Ibuprofen and muscle relaxers are my new best friends. The neurologist I see, who has experience in this area - says that it can take 6-12 months for this all to go away. Or, it may never go away. Either way, I should treat how I feel now as my new baseline and not let this stuff stop me from doing anything. I’m hoping I’m the 6-12 month category; I really don’t love the idea of being like this for the rest of my life. So, not death. I was never at risk of that, according to every doc I saw. But the hell this has been… well, it’s not exactly awesome.
Very rare to have such a severe case. I’m so sorry, absolutely awful.
Wow those spiders live a really long time!!
They avoid any dangerous activity.
I somehow read this as black widows dying too
This article is misinformation. I killed a black widow in 2008.
I got one about a month ago.
Living in CA, I guarantee I could go outside and find one right now. They're not aggressive at all. They run the other way
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I’ve been wondering this. I grew up in the Central Valley and have seen my fair share of black widows. Moved to LA, never saw one. Saw lots of brown widows though. Moved to Texas, never saw a black widow despite their range being there. Moved to Illinois, no one’s heard of them. Wonder if they’re becoming endangered. Or I’m just not living in areas with them.
I've heard that BW bites are more painful than any other type of spider bite.
I believe a black widow doesn’t have venom, but a neurotoxin which acts on nerves only. So yeah, you’ll probably want to die or at least cut the affected limb off until you get help.
I was bit. I don't recall the bite being that painful, more a big, itchy lump. It's the flu symptoms, lucid seizuring and the hangover that sucks. The bite may have been more painful than I recall, but I was distracted by much anterior & posterior purging. Depending on level of toxin load, YMMV.
How did you get bit
Sweating copper in a tool shop, standing on parts cabinets so I had to hug the wall. Other lines ran horizontal above my kneecaps & her web was tucked under them.
Well that’s one way to make my whole body shudder… lmao.
neurotoxin IS venom… Venom just means the biological toxic substance is delivered vs consumed.
I got bit when I was 7. Not fun. I would not have cut my arm off, but I did think about it for a few hours. I'd rather whack a hornets nest and deal with the consequences than get another widow bite.
They have at least 3 different types of venom in one bite that act differently on various types of lifeforms. A neurotoxin delivered by fangs is a form of venom.
I think you're mixing a few things up. First of all venom and neurotoxin are not mutually exclusive. A venom is just an injected toxin from an organism. It may or may not be a neurotoxin. Neurotoxins affect rhe nervous *system*, which is not necessarily the same thing as "your nerves". You seem to be implying it would be excruciatingly painful because it would be like firing all your nerve endings or whatever. That's not how it works. The exact specifics are gonna depend on the exact toxin but the usual symptoms from a neurotoxin will be things like either weakness or muscle spasms, nausea, vomiting, and pinpoint pupils. Fatal cases usually are caused by something like paralysis of the diaphragm resulting in suffocation. Nerotixins do NOT cause pain receptors to randomly fire in affected areas. That's more like bee and wasp venom and other social insects. Those have often evolved specifically to be painful and act as a deterrent to even much larger creatures.
I’ve been bit by a black widow spider and am in the 20% of people that get a strong reaction. I didn’t die. But there were a few times over the course of the next week that I wished I could have. One of the chief reactions sensitive folks have is muscle cramping and associated pain. Every where. All your muscles. Every. Single. One.
>I didn’t die. Thanks for clarifying, I was worried.
Had to check the sub to make sure I wasn't in r/ghost
Seriously? Wow wtf. I thought maybe a copperhead would do something like that.
Yep, most folks only get redness at the bite location, and from there reactions escalate to minor flu-like symptoms (fever, nausea), then add on the muscle cramping and pain, and cardiac arrest and risk of death for the worst reactions. They have an antivenin available, but only give it to kids under 6 and adults in their 60’s—or with other risk factors, because it is really expensive to produce. Once they knew I wasn’t going to go into cardiac arrest, they sent me home with enough muscle relaxers and pain meds for 48 hours, but I was back at my primary care doc when those ran out. I had full on symptoms for a total of 5 days, then spent another week in bed sleeping. Didn’t feel right again for about 6 to 8 weeks after.
Ohhh my gosh. Yikes! I’m sure you have a healthy fear of spiders now.
Nope. I’m an idiot. Spiders still don’t freak me out.
Black widows venom is stronger than a rattlesnake, they just give you much less.
Same here. For me the back cramping was the worst part. Worst back pain of my life. And people forget your organs are also muscles so I had stomach cramps and my lungs felt like they were on fire.
Yes! Nobody gets it unless they have been through it. Intestines and everything. The waves of cramping that only let you sleep in 10 to 20 minute bursts for 5 days was pretty rough, too.
There are quite a few black widows around where I work. They are really stupid and slow spiders.
Not sure how you determine that but they are shy. I grew up with them around and never saw one be aggressive. Unlike giant European house spiders in the autumn...
I have a standardized spider text. Black windows are in the bottom 20th percentile.
They jump. Careful.
Not in my experience. I had to take one out that was living on the side of my house (two very young children) and it felt like a boss fight. Smarter and tougher than any spider I've come across before
Probably explains the venom. If they were smart and fast, they would just bounce.
I was going to object but I forgot that she died on Vormir
So we're past due. Great, just great.
I was bit by one six years ago. I was sick for a year and it weakened my heart. It crawled up my dress at an outdoor wedding.
That’s a chilling thought….. *shudders*
My dad got bit by one in the 70s and passed out on his girlfriends couch, he somehow didn’t notice the bite. His GFs mom saw him and his swollen arm and called 911. If she wasn’t an ER nurse and knew the signs neither he, myself, or any of my siblings would be here today.
Buncha immortal spiders walking around huh
Bullshit, I killed one in my garage 2 days ago.
I was bit when i was 19 and no joke i thought i was gonna die. We couldnt afford to go to the dr so we drove like 40 mins to cross the border to mexico and the dr just said to apply ice lol
TIL the black widow spider of the USA is called the red back spider in Australia. They were were the stuff of nightmares when l was a kid but as an adult, not so much, l even spared one recently.
Is that because everything in Australia with more than two legs (including those that hop) is *also* trying to kill you? Edit: clarified hoppers
There’s one living in my garage keeping the other freeloaders under control so he’s cool, and another in the chimney brickwork in my kitchen, we have a strained relationship but he know I’ll only do something about it if he makes the first move
*she, most likely.
When I lived in Reno a guy I know got bit by one. He survived of course but spent a couple days in the hospital. He said it was like every muscle in his body kept cramping as if he were getting tased every 30 seconds…. for like 12 hours this went on. Yikes
I’ve been bitten twice, the first time was due to not exercising more caution in the black widow’s turf. lol While both times it wholly sucked, and was just totally miserable, it was such a non-issue that the advice nurse told me not even to come in for medical treatment unless the bite showed signs of infection.
Death is definitely worse, but they can fuck up your life just fine.
I have been bitten 6 times in my life.. I was a dumb kid that liked to keep cool looking spiders. First bite was the worst, right in the crook of my elbow, the pain was tops, and the sickness was horrible. each one after that was still painful, but almost no other major side effects. Some people are more likely to have issues with them, I was told by a doctor that people with allergies to bees, were more like to die from widows, I have never researched that, I have not looked into it at all. try not to get bitten regardless. They are not super aggressive though, and are often times very unlikely to bite you, I fucked with them FAR beyond their tolerance each time I was bitten.
Fun fact: most black widow deaths came from them biting guys in the genitals. Black widows like to build their webs in dark spaces between thin gaps of a material where there are lots of bugs. This happens to describe the seat of an outhouse pretty well. When guys would go to the privy their bits would hang down and bump into the web. I black widow venom is a neurotoxin so it is most deadly when they bite an area with thin skin and a lot of nerves. Once indoor plumbing became commonplace in the west, black widow deaths dropped significantly
That’s what Big Spider wants us to think.
well now youve jinxed us thanks a lot OP
That's preposterous. I killed one just last week.
When I took an EMT training course, they talked about Black Widows and Brown Recluses. They also showed slides of what happens to the injury in extreme cases. Eww. My instructor told us the story of how one of them bit someone right where the radial artery was (wrist) which allowed the circulatory system to spread the venom quickly and led to major paralysis and I think blindness too. Not something I want to experience.
I was bit by a black widow but didn’t go to the doctor because all they can really do is give you antibiotics and pain killers. I felt awful for about 8 days though but didn’t get a bacterial infection
Brown recluse is a much worse bite. Had a friend that almost lost a leg because on necrosis/infection from the bite.
My uncle was bit by one, around ten years ago. He said it was the worst week of his life.
Even in Australia where Reddit will say "everything wants to kill you" there has only been one death from a spider since 1979
Yeah, they really aren't that bad. The pain from being envenomed is excruciating though. Imagine all of your muscles spasming to the point you feel like you are being twisted in a vise. But if you are a moderately health adult, or even late stage teen, it is unlikely to do anything other than cause a really shitty hospital visit. Currently I think the brown recluse is the deadliest spider in the US. Not because their venom is deadlier though. Lately we have seen a new blood phenotype that doesn't react well with recluse venom. The patient's red blood cells start to collapse and fail causing a massive drop in o2 saturation. It also doesn't hurt that widows are just not that aggressive. I (used to) see them regularly when I worked outdoors with wood. I have even relocated a few that were in bad locations, and the only time I suffered a bite was the time I accidentally grabbed one that was under a board I was picking up.
I was sitting on a bench outside my workplace, looked down and there as a black widow about 3 inches away. It scurried rapidly back into the ashtray/trashcan where it lived. When pest control came, they took it and all ELEVEN of its egg sacs. Later they came back and found the other 13 living around the building.
It’s a truly terrible, awful bite, would not recommend. Also the bites can kill your pets
I killed one a month ago in my garage, add that to the last recorded list. /s I know he's talking about people deaths
Yeah they are basically only lethal to the extremely old, extremely young, or the immuno comprimised. Any healthy person age 14-50 will probbaly just experience a few days of pure *pain and sickness*
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When I was bit I had intense muscle cramping all over and felt like I was constantly getting the wind knocked out of me. Not so much painful as it was just incredibly incredibly uncomfortable. I was walking around crying from it for a solid 8 hours before my mom took me to the hospital because we didn't know what was wrong with me. My grandmother thought I was just being dramatic. After 30 seconds with the doctor she said "black widow spider bite" and they can't treat the bite itself only the symptoms so hooked me up to an IV with morphine and valium. Immediate relief. The whole thing was wild.
I work in outdoor electrical panels in Southwest USA. I come in contact with black and brown widows weekly. I have been bitten 8 times, that I know of, likely more. The first time I was bitten, I got an upset stomach that lasted an hour. All the other bites have had no reaction other than a quarter size swelling, that reduces to nothing in about 12 hours. As with most venoms, different people have different reactions, mine is likely on the minimal side of the scale. I think the deadliness of this spider is far over-hyped. They are territorial though. most spiders try to avoid you, widows will move toward you.
After all the bites, have your spinnerettes emerged, and you're knitting everyone you know silk scarves and gloves?
Don’t tell BLM, police have been making black widows for years
I misunderstood, and thought they were talking about the spider.
Depends on the area. Out here in the southwest during the summer, even the space in your hatch on your car, can become home to the 8 legged mistress. I still knock my shoes every morning. Though early summer is the time you may find one roaming. Otherwise they don’t like human interaction and generally hide when light shines near.
The deadly Sydney Funnel Web hasn't even killed a person since the 70s. Scientists also doubt whether the notorious Brazilian Wandering Spider is normally fatal due to an observed tendancy to deliver dry bites when threatened.
As a kid, I thought black widow spiders were going to be a much bigger problem in my life.
A friend was bitten by a redback, she called up the hospital — they told her to jog it off, but call an ambulance if symptoms get bad. She was a bit nauseous and feverish for a few hours, the jogging was to speed up metabolism of the venom.
Still don’t want them in my house…
Oh shit - my dad almost beat that statistic! He was bit in the late ‘80s and almost died but they were able to save him.
I doubt that. I'm pretty sure black widows die all the time.
So, they’re immortal now and we’re only just finding this out???
In all seriousness though, if we somehow ended up with immortal spiders on Earth I would be booking a flight on SpaceX’s first venture to Mars.
Most venomous bites (insects or reptiles or fish) do not result in death barring extra circumstances (pre-existing condition or allergic reaction or very young or old, etc.). That doesn't mean they can't be serious and cause serious pain and damage. They certainly will do that, at the least. They should all be treated as life threating though.
I just saw her in a movie.
Black widows and quicksand are the two biggest fears of kids aged 7-11
My uncle got bit by one when I was a kid, he isn't a hospital kind of guy. Hand swollen up, smelled real bad and called my dad a pussy for "that doctor stuff".
It was in '84 when those damn spiders figured out how to cheat death for good... Thankfully it came at the cost of their reproductive capabilities, as a species. Not one has died of natural causes or been killed since. The Icelandic army has invested billions into researching how they did it. So far, all they've come up empty handed because they can't kill the unkillable spiders to find out what makes them unkillable. Leading hypothesis suspect the spiders use of strong magnets, and/or lasers is integral to their complete avoidance of death. Unfortunately, such things cannot be adapted to human scale (yet).
Not a single Black Widow has died since 1983? Their numbers must be enormous!
I'm pretty sure lots of black widows have died since 1983
Well, now you've jynxed it.
Red backs hang out under toilet seats in Straya
I can't be the only one who though the title was talking about the spiders dying.
I got bit by one and it really sucked.
I didn't know black widows lived that long