Another summer PSA:
- Widows and recluses, shown here, are THE ONLY spiders in all North America whose bite can do anything more than sting a little, weird allergies excepted. Period. You can stop posting every single spider you see to our bug groups with “…..DANGEROUS?????”. There’s two. There’s only ever been two.
- Out of 2,000 reported bites a year no American has ever been killed by a black widow anyway.
- Everything you hear about recluse bites is also exaggerated or just made up.
- No, there’s no evidence that “hobo spiders” have a serious bite and there’s no dangerous invasive spiders or new spiders sweeping America, there is seriously just the two and the two aren’t even as bad as everyone thinks they are.
If you’re bitten by either one you should probably see a doctor just in case but you are highly unlikely to become the first death out of thousands.
These are actually really good ID pictures. I’ve never seen a recluse picture that gave a sense of scale.
Uhm, did they forget that Wolf Spiders exist?
Wolf spiders aren’t deadly, and scientific study has never shown a wolf spider bite to be necrotizing (or black widows for that matter) the bites sting just like any other, but much like bw and br they are way overhyped.
Probably weird question, and I swear I’m asking bc I genuinely want to know (also bc I work in the sticks and keep bug repellent in the car):
Are those pics of nasty looking spider bites usually from ppl who are allergic? Or is it more likely to be some infection at/near the bite?
They usually just aren’t real spider bite photos at all! I mean it’s like an EPIDEMIC on the internet of infections, boils, and even fake “zombie makeup” going viral as alleged recluse bites to such an extreme that it is very nearly impossible to verify anything on google images as the real deal.
Some jerk added several such photos to the notes on here and I originally wrote this response to them, but I’m changing it to be a nice response to a nicer person. Here’s some relevant links:
- The American Board of Family Medicine says that Recluse Bites are horribly misdiagnosed
- Dermatology Journal says they’re so misdiagnosed we need to start specially training doctors to stop mistaking everything under the sun for recluse bites.
- The University of California Entomological Department says that out of hundreds of confirmed bites studied, only two even required medical attention and topical antibiotics are enough in almost all cases.
- The New England Journal of Medicine says that over 40 skin conditions are responsible for what people believe recluse bites cause.
When a real recluse bite does get bad, which again is pretty rare with or without an allergy, it probably is almost always due to secondary bacterial infection.
They don’t even make an antivenom for recluses, so antibiotics are all doctors give anyone anyway for actual bites, and people should get antibiotics on positively any kind of animal bite or scratch! Even from an indoor cat or dog!