Whatever you believe about spiders, chances are it’s wrong, and the internet is saturated with bad science that will mislead you further.
Travis McEnery figures people want to know three things about the spiders living with them: Is it gonna surprise me, or stay put? Will it make a mess? And, if it’s bitey, do I need to worry about it?
But scientific evidence is a puny defence against the massive swarm of misinformation. Spiders are always being blamed for bites they didn’t cause – no matter how many times arachnologists try to set the record straight. That habit can have all kinds of consequences, even when it comes to tall tales about arachnids. In 2018, for instance, a California man set fire to his parents’ house while blow-torching a nest of spiders. That same year, the sighting of an unusual spider closed down an Ottawa government building not once, but twice; $18,000 of taxpayer money went to fumigating the building, and presumably dispatching what was, Dr. Scott says, more than likely an everyday arachnid minding its own business.
Midway through the yellow sac video, he traps his guest spider on a rock island in a casserole dish filled with water and pokes at it with a block of cheddar cheese. After a minute of pestering, the little spider finally bares tiny fangs and bites down. Point proven: This supposedly villainous arachnid had to be badgered into biting, and, even then, only in self-defence.
Mr. McEnery, 44, passed his last formal science class in high school, but he used to catch and study spiders in pickle jars as a boy and has owned three tarantulas – Bella, Parker and Boris – since he was 17. That paper, he discovered, does not convict the yellow sac spider at all; at best, the authors declare it an arachnid of interest. It reports on five bites over five years in Boston that were “probably” caused by a yellow sac, but also may not have been. As is common, none of the supposed victims actually found the suspect.
Mr. Vetter says his correspondents often claim to be bitten by a brown recluse in parts of North America where they aren’t found , in cobwebs they don’t build, and in quick sightings before they disappear. “People can’t even identify spiders properly when they have them dead in their hand,” Mr. Vetter says. “Let alone running across a mattress into the dark.”
As a little girl, Dr. Scott remembers being particularly terrified by the idea that a spider would seek her out at night and lay its eggs in her hair. But while studying biology at Simon Fraser University, she took a coveted research job that required feeding hundreds of black widows in a lab. This dose of exposure therapy – the tried-and-true treatment for phobias – turned her irrational fear into fact-based fascination.
For research, Mr. Vetter once captured 2,055 brown recluse spiders in a Kansas home. They were spread through every room in the house, 488 of them big enough to chomp down on a human victim. Yet, for six years, the resident family of four had shared the space without incident. Can some bites take a turn for the worse? Like any wound, infections happen. Underlying medical conditions might lead to complications. Where you get bitten and how much venom the spider injects can also make a difference. Small children and seniors have a higher risk of side effects. Try to save the spider suspect, and if a bite starts to look weird or you feel sick, Mr. McEnery advises sensibly, “Go to the doctor.
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