The Deadly Hobo Recluse Funnel Widow

[kynekh_amagire]

So I'm kind of stuck at home today, keeping an eye on the doglet, with nothing to amuse myself but the Internet. It's okay: I make my own fun.

Like Googling "deadly brown recluse" until I feel superior, for example.

Poor huntsman.

That isn't even a spider.

Agelenid.

Wolf spider, looks like.

'Nother wolf.

Golden silk spider!

Orb weaver!

Comments

[kynekh_amagire]

Male.
Female.
Showing eyes.
Here is where you find them.

Lots of spiders are brown, and lots have a "violin" marking. The important characteristics that conclusively distinguish the brown recluse from similar spiders are things like their eye pattern (Loxosceles is a six-eyed genus, with their eyes arranged in three distinct pairs: most spiders have eight). Aside from the infamous violin (which some individuals have, and some don't), they are also unsually smoothly-colored spiders, with no banding or patterning on the legs or abdomen, and no visible spines on the legs. They are also fairly small spiders, mostly not larger than could comfortably stand on a U.S. quarter with legs fully stretched out.

With that said, and with sympathy for your friend, brown recluses aren't a threat to most people. Being bitten at all is rare, considering how common the spider is in its range, and most bites are "dry bites" which inject no venom. Nearly all bites where envenomation definitely took place heal on their own, and misdiagnosis is still impressively common. Actual statistics, of course, are a bit of a clusterfuck anyway: people seeking medical treatment for a "spider bite" rarely thought to collect the spider at the time, and often didn't see a spider at all. The "spider" is a retroactive explanation for any mysterious skin lesion, which has resulted in spiders catching the blame for everything from staph infections to Lyme disease.

People will believe anything about spiders.

[sandelwood]

I wonder how many bites from other relatively harmless species occur that the individual simply has a bad reaction to, or the spider perhaps carried a bacteria that caused the bite to infect, and was blamed on a recluse.

I mean considering how often people get bitten in their sleep by common varieties of house spiders (I can count on 2 or 3 a year, at least), I think it's possible people are just blaming what they fear instead of an also rare but possible occurrence.

[kynekh_amagire]

Any small puncture wound is a potential avenue for nasty bacteria to enter the body, so I'd say "yep"!

However, I would be fairly surprised if most of those "bitten while sleeping" incidents were attributable to spiders, actually. It's not impossible, but really, people's beds/bedclothes are unlikely spider habitat for a number of reasons (there's nothing for them to eat or mate with, dangerous loud vibrations, difficult terrain). Bedbugs, mosquitoes, biting flies, fleas, and chiggers are more likely.

[sandelwood]

Don't discount that it does happen, though. I can't count how many times I've been awake in bed, usually reading, and felt something crawl up my leg under the covers, only to throw them back and see a little brown spider running for its life (I just know it's usually not a recluse just because it's brown), or woken up to a squished one. All the time? No, but it happens.

I've also lived in an apartment with a bedbug infestation (previous to this one, part of why I purged all of my soft furniture and most of my clothes). Bedbug bites don't look like spider bites at all. They're smaller, don't have visible punctures and usually there's a big cluster of them in the same area (and dude, if you google "bedbug bites" images, I don't know what kind of weak ass immune systems those people have, but damn, they never looked that nasty on me). Obviously if a spider feels like it has to bite, it's not going to do it twice, it's going to get the fuck out of there before something worse happens. Blood feeding insects are happy to keep on keeping on.

Plus, if you have bedbugs, then there are things to eat in your bed. An unlikely place to find a meal, but if those are the only bugs in the house, then a hunting spider will follow them out of hiding when it gets dark.

[kynekh_amagire]

I still don't buy "a spider bit me while I was asleep" as anything short of a one-in-a-million scenario.

Only a few spiders will eat bedbugs (or fleas, or ticks; bloodsucking insects tend to be heavily chitinous and a worthwhile meal only to specialists). And houses are full of easier prey than bedbugs. Even in brand-new houses, house spiders of different species will happily prey on each other. Which leaves the "wandered into bedding accidentally and couldn't escape" scenario: not impossible, but still unlikely to result in a spider bite, given that spiders are fantastically good at avoiding us. Most species will only bite if they are directly threatened.

So, even if a spider wanders into someone's bed AND makes actual contact with the occupant AND is provoked into a bite, it STILL probably isn't going to manage it. Few spiders can bite through fabric, and the most likely bite-provoking situation -- where the human rolls onto the spider -- leaves the spider in no position to deliver a bite. (A spider's jaws are underneath it. Spiders can't bite what's pressing down on them.) The spider would have to be standing on bare skin, and then suddenly pressed on, but not hard enough to crush it outright. Which is kind of Lottery-Land, at that point.

So, yeah, it could happen. A lot less than people think it does, though.

[archteryx]

Yeah, in my friend's case, I think they got the spider AND ran an ELISA venom test from the wound (poor circulation in the leg greatly slowed the spread, and they got a sample quickly), so it was a pretty ironclad case. They also tested him for a number of other necrotic diseases, most especially MSRA. Negative.

Brown Recluse venom is weird -- many people react less strongly to it then to a mosquito bite, yeah, but for some small percentage, it triggers some sort of cross-reaction that turns into absolute horror. My friend was one of those unlucky few; he just can't buy a break in his life.

Spiders in general, though, are cool for me, so long as they stay outdoor pets. I actually have a pair of nocturnal, very rough-web hunting spiders outside my door right now, happily disposing of wasps, stinkbugs and other annoyances. More power to them!