5 ms·
The article only mentions it in passing, but the Brown Widow bite is much, much less dangerous. No medical attention required, just clean it and apply itch cre
by silisili 4y ago
The article only mentions it in passing, but the Brown Widow bite is much, much less dangerous. No medical attention required, just clean it and apply itch cream, if you want.
Compared to the black widow bite, I think I'm rooting for these guys.
- NotYourLawyer 4y agoYeah this is the best news I’ve heard today. And I’m certainly not going to go easy on the black widows I do find just because they’re having a hard time. I hope they get eradicated.
- naikrovek 4y agohealthy adults have nothing to fear from a black widow spider. only the extremely young and old will have a hard time with a black widow bite, and black widow bites kill about 6 people a year.
- CyberDildonics 4y agoI don't think just being able to survive a bite means there is "nothing to fear".
- naikrovek 4y agomost will categorize a black widow bite near a bee-sting. I have been bitten by black widows multiple times, because I liked to stick my hands inside piles of cut wood looking for bugs as a child. yes, these were verified black widow bites. the only time I had any sickness or wound to show was when I had a small wound that took two weeks to heal instead of less than one, and it was very tender the whole time, which was unusual. maybe black widow bites just don't bother me, but I doubt it. every other bite from every other bug always hurt a lot and left a mark, at best.
- CyberDildonics 4y agoTo be clear, because you were bitten and didn't think it was that bad, people in general have "nothing to worry about" ? https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/black-widow-spider-bite https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/black-wid...
- naikrovek 4y agoI can only call upon my own experiences, man. are you able to fetch data from the minds of others at will? because I'm not.
- CyberDildonics 4y agoI can only call upon my own experiences, man. That's not what you said at all. You didn't say 'this was my experience' at first, you said that it wasn't a big deal for anyone because most people survive. Now you're saying you are just giving your experience.
- NotYourLawyer 4y ago"Data" is not the plural of "anecdote."
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Madmallard 4y agoa healthy youtuber exposed himself to a black widow bite for science because he was doing it with all sorts of other venomous insects he stopped the channel and stream for a week because he was seriously ill and went to the emergency room one of the days "nothing to fear" is not really correct
- refurb 4y agoMy understanding is the reaction to black widow venom can differ a lot between people. Some people end up with a red swelling, itch, pain and that’s it. This is the majority of cases. Others can end up with a large area of tissue necrosis and get very sick. Some require skin grafts.
- Madmallard 4y agoBlack widow venom is neurotoxic so you have CNS effects
- GuB-42 4y agoThat would be brown reculses and spiders of the same family. I am not aware of black widow venom causing necrosis, it is a neurotoxin, causing things like paralysis. And indeed, in both cases, serious conditions are rare. Also, many bites are dry bites, where no venom is injected.
- harshreality 4y agoBlack widow venom is neurotoxic, and pain is its most distinguishing feature. Tissue necrosis would suggest an infection, or a different spider bite (like a brown recluse bite). Black widow venom, on its own, doesn't lead to significant necrosis. All spider bites, and skin punctures in general, can get infected. If infected by flesh-eating bacteria, recluse-like tissue necrosis results. This results in overreporting of brown recluse bites, due to brown recluse paranoia and availability bias.
- refurb 4y agoBlack widow venom contains more than just neurotoxin, but also toxins that attack the tissue. Besides, the main components of the venom of the spider are collagenase, protease, phospholipase, hyaluronidase, neurotoxin, and tissue-dissolving toxin. The secreted venom not only damages local tissue of the bite, but also causes local tissue swelling, degeneration, necrosis, ulcer formation... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8390344/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8390344/
- Scramblejams 4y agoI'm sure the effect varies from person to person, but this healthy adult who was bitten would vehemently disagree: https://www.al.com/news/2015/06/how_a_ua_doctor_allowed_a_blac.html https://www.al.com/news/2015/06/how_a_ua_doctor_allowed_a_bl...
- everforward 4y ago> 10:45 a.m.: The spider was permitted to bite for 10 seconds. This part kind of clouds the data. He held it with foreceps against his skin for 10 seconds, which is far longer than a normal bite. It's not really representative of the bite you'd get if you put your hand in a woodpile or something.
- Scramblejams 4y agoWe definitely could use N >> 1 here. Consider this a call for volunteers!
- NotYourLawyer 4y ago1. Not even true. 2. I have kids. Fuck them spiders.
- naikrovek 4y agoyes, true. kids survive and almost always suffer very few ill effects. newborn babies and the very old make up the less than 1 dozen who die of a black widow bite each year.
- NotYourLawyer 4y agoThis part is true: >black widow bites kill about 6 people a year This part is not: > healthy adults have nothing to fear from a black widow spider. only the extremely young and old will have a hard time with a black widow bite Plenty of people have extremely serious reactions that fall short of death. That’s still worth avoiding!
- babyshake 4y agoThat's funny, because as a child I was completely terrified by the prospect of a black widow. I thought they were basically like a small demon in spider form.
- njarboe 4y agoAnd they sure look like it too. Shiny black, bulbous, with the red hour glass on their underside. Yikes!
- psychphysic 4y agoWill they get eradicated? Or have Brown Widows now added a potent selection pressure to make Black Widows more aggressive... Humans have long facilitated and underestimated the unintended downsides of introduced species.
- alyandon 4y agoThe article says Browns don't like desert/forested areas so Black widows will likely be just fine as a species.
- chasd00 4y agoi bought one of those cattle watering tanks to make a swimming pool ( wife's idea ). When it was delivered it had some very large black widows happily living inside. I wanted to leave them be but they were so big, i'm probably exaggerating but i swear they were as big as your fist, and I have kids so an executive decision was made.
- lbotos 4y agoWhere in the world? Northeast US I’ve never seen a black widow larger than say an American quarter. They are smaller spiders as I know them
- prmoustache 4y agoblack widows are much smaller. Either you were high or you saw something else.
- jeroenhd 4y agoThere's an interesting phenomena where the brains of people with arachnophobia will enlarge the perceived size of spiders. People with an irrational fear of spiders literally perceive spiders to be bigger than other people. The sample size wasn't exactly huge (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887618511001447 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088761851...) but the science seems to resonate with other research in the field. All of this is to say that it's possible that someone may perceive a spider to be much bigger than it really is, through no fault of their own.
- MichaelZuo 4y agoThat's really curious, do you know where else this is the case? Other phobias?
- jeroenhd 4y agoI'm no doctor, nor am I a psychologist, so I can't easily pick out good sources for this topic. All I remember is this particular story hitting the news and really resonating with me (mostly because I have an irrational reaction to spiders myself, though "fear" may not be the right term). There are 83 works on Google Scholar citing the paper I linked above: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=15254216166904174230 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1525421616690417423... I'm not qualified to judge these papers nor their journals, but some of them may serve as a jumping off point for your own research if you're interested! Some papers seem to revolve around general state-of-mind biases ("Human safety and risk management"), while others focus on more concrete links such as biases in perception of "interpersonal distance".
- Nursie 4y agoInteresting, they are both latrodectus species, and (according to wikipedia) the brown widow has venom that is more potent in mice (0.43 mg/kg LD50 vs 1.39 mg/kg), it's just that they can't inject very much of it. Huh. The redback here in Aus is likely somewhere between the two...
- nerdchum 4y agoI'm not sure this is accurate about being less dangerous. It has the same poison as a black widow, just seems to inject less of it...in most cases... I would not recommend treating these spiders casually