Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of the Black Widow Spider
Spiders – especially well-known venomous species such as the Black Widow – top many people’s lists when it comes to fear. But unless you’re incredibly unlucky, they really don’t need to be feared.
It is part of the Lifehacker’s Never Fear series . The world is a scary place, but we tend to lose our fear in things that don’t really deserve our precious time and energy. Let’s fight these fears with a little knowledge.
They would rather live on the street, away from you
I’m not a fan of being around spiders- generally but I’m trying to face my fears and leave them to be. All spiders, including the fearsome Black Widow, want nothing to do with you. The reason they are even near you and your house is because it beckons them . Why? The light attracts insects, which in turn attract spiders.
In addition, spiders love warmth, need water, and outside the house there are permanent nooks and crannies where spiders can make a safe home. Unless your home is regularly filled with enough insects to provide food, the black widow will never go inside unless it’s an accident.
They rarely bite, even when they are near people.
Everyone seems to be intimidated by the black widow bite. Yes, they are venomous, and their venom is probably about 15 times stronger than that of a rattlesnake , but your chances of being bitten are very slim. They are non-aggressive and only bite in self-defense. You should only worry about female widow spiders, which can be identified by the reddish hourglass pattern on their black belly.
In most cases, not even touching it is enough for it to bite you. One study, published in the journal Animal Behavior , found that black widows usually only bite if they are pinched along their entire length (like a crush). In the study, repeatedly poking the spiders with a finger did not result in a bite, but instead caused them to flee.
Don’t believe me? Here are some video evidence:
In the video above, professional madman Coyote Peterson from Brave Wilderness is free to hold one of them with his bare hands. For several minutes he crawls around his arms without any problems. He does not feel danger, so he does not stick fangs into his skin. Since you won’t pinch, grab, sit down and try to smash one of them with your bare skin, black widows will leave you alone.
If they bite you, it is highly unlikely that you will die or even get hurt.
You may have heard horror stories of black widow bites, causing nausea, muscle aches and even mild paralysis, but this is rare, even if you are bitten in some way. Black widows don’t always poison their bites, and even if they do, they can regulate how much they use per bite. According to the previously mentioned research on black widow bites, creatures tend to inject poison only when they feel their life is under threat. If not, they often give a dry bite.
But what if they actually use their poison? As Katherine Scott , an arachnologist at Simon Fraser University, explains in LiveScience , most of the bites that happen are not serious. People either recover from the bite without any intervention or go to the hospital to treat their symptoms before being discharged. Scott notes that of the 1,866 cases of black widow bites reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers in 2013 , only 14 of them ended up with any serious symptoms. Oh, and nobody died.
Remember, the poison of the black widow is for insects to eat, not you. It is not intended to kill you, nor is it even intended to be used against you in self-defense. Deaths from black widow bites are very rare. They can be much more dangerous for young children, the elderly and those already ill, but they are unlikely to be inconvenient for ordinary people in good health. Just don’t look for them and don’t try to crush them.