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Myth of the Brown Recluse

spiders.ucr.edu

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Re: Myth of the Brown Recluse

#101

Post by dwd »

notacoward wrote: post #38

If people in the midwest are laughing, imagine how Australians feel.

Bemused

Redbacks can be fairly common but if you encourage daddy long legs and leave the house spiders alone you'll rarely find one. House spiders though can make you quite sick if you get bitten.

Sydney funnel web spiders are dangerous and aggressive - enough said.

White-tailed spiders that also get blamed for necrotic lesions but is likely bacterial are fast and tend to wander. They'll sidestep a shoe and jump at you before disappearing. I've spent hours upending a room after losing sight of one.

Most people though are more scared of huntsman spiders and they can get pretty big and move fast. There's a certain type that are thicker in body and will come at you. You think you have it pinned under the broom head and the next second it's racing up the handle jumping at you.

Re: Myth of the Brown Recluse

#102

Post by asciimo »

nimbius wrote: post #58

Working in a midwest auto repair shop, we get our share of spiders and such. Brown recluse spiders are just that, reclusive. Ive seen them take up residence in old tire piles mostly. Ive rarely seen a recluse, but our shop bathroom has a small window where a particularly large hobo spider has set up shop. We named him Biggie because, well, its a huge spider that just sits on a web all day munching bugs and judging yo…

Thank you for being an agent of harmony.

Re: Myth of the Brown Recluse

#103

Post by njarboe »

The Myth of the Myth of the Brown Recluse

I have lived in California for 25 years and have never heard about the Brown Recluse living here. I guess I don't watch enough local news, but I think that Rick Vetter, being in the Department of Entomology at UC Riverside, is going to have an extreme over exposure to people who think the Brown Recluse is a problem. The random people who send him spiders are worried about the Brown Recluse, but 500 in say 30 years is not very many. If 1 in 500,000 people are super worried about these spiders in California, then he might interact with most of them. The essay is of course a bit tongue-in-cheek, but this problem of the Myth of the Brown Recluse is probably only experience by a small number of people.

Re: Myth of the Brown Recluse

#104

Post by orthecreedence »

cgriswald wrote: post #65
amdavidson wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the place with no dangerous wildlife?

Central Minnesota is basicaly dangerous wildlife free if you except disease-carrying ticks (and now maybe the mosquitos?) and don't consider non-predators dangerous. I imagine vast swaths of Iowa and eastern Nebraska are similar. Maybe the Dakotas too although I suspect there are a ton of coyotes there. Minnesota has two venomous snakes, black beers, grey wolves, coyotes, and the northern black widow, but none of the…

(Northern) Minnesotan here. Don't forget moose! I'd much rather see a black bear in the woods (and I have, several times, even a mama with her cub) than a moose. They will stomp you to death, sometimes just for fun.

Re: Myth of the Brown Recluse

#105

Post by lisper »

jngreenlee wrote: post #70
VikingCoder wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish I could tell some system who I designate as authorities for given subjects. And then I could see the news annotated by the authorities I chose. Or by the people they acknowledge have authority over those subjects. Linus Torvalds is an expert on Linux. John Carmack is an expert on computer graphics. Tiger Woods is an expert on Golf. Al Gore is an expert on Climate Change. I don't care what Tiger Woods th…

Sorry couldn't help but LOL and sorry for getting off-topic. >Al Gore is an expert on Climate Change. Might need to rethink that. He's a fundraiser and tv personality. Think 'evangelist'. It's not evident that he understands complex systems or probabilities better than say, Taleb. AFAIK, so far all his historic projections have been incorrect. This is the danger of 'celebrity'. Similar with Neil DeGasse. That said, I…

> It's not evident that he understands complex systems

It's not evident that he understand evangelizing either.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of Al Gore. The world wold be a much better place if he had won the 2000 election. But the one image that sticks with me is the scene in "An Inconvenient Truth" where Al is being driven around in the back seat of a plush town car. A more tone-deaf image in that context is hard to imagine.

Re: Myth of the Brown Recluse

#106

Post by cgriswald »

mikeyouse wrote: post #89
cgriswald wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the Bay Area in a warmer microclimate. We've got widows, sizable orb weavers, and supposedly tarantulas (although I've never seen one and have my doubts). I've twice been bitten by something while either under my house or in my basically wild yard and gotten nasty infection. One bite was on my elbow and become necrotic. It was treated only with antibiotics. It now looks like I took a bullet. The other was o…

> Although I have my doubts I take it your never been to Mt Diablo during mating season then? The place is filthy with tarantulas. Just a random YouTube but at certain times of the year, the road is covered in them: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g4w5UbvaYy0

Cool vid. Nope, never been there, but I want to go now. I'm in the hills of the peninsula. I've done a ton of hiking near my house but I've never found one.

Re: Myth of the Brown Recluse

#107

Post by mrob »

papyrus23 wrote: post #56
amdavidson wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the place with no dangerous wildlife?

The UK?

We have bees and wasps, which cause several deaths per year:

"Estimates of the prevalence of anaphylaxis vary widely. In 2000, it was estimated that 25% of all UK deaths from anaphylaxis were due to reactions to hymenoptera stings. Every year in the UK there are 2–9 deaths due to anaphylaxis from bee or wasp stings."

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta246/documents/venom-anaph...

Re: Myth of the Brown Recluse

#108

Post by Digory »

cantankerous wrote: post #77

I've lived in Portland OR, Mid MO, and the Kansas City area. In mid-Missouri, the brown recluse is the standard house spider. Pretty much every spider in my house there was a brown recluse. I had a weird bruise-y/necrotic bite on my hip that I assumed came from one that got in bed with me. It healed up fine without any medical intervention even though it lingered for awhile. I suspect a lot of people get bitten over…

Our exterminator told us they're terribly common and difficult to 'solve,' especially in a house with a wood shake roof.

He suggests ignoring them, unless you find they've wiped out all the other spiders in your house. The brown recluse is, apparently, the apex spider in mid-Missouri.

Even then, sticky traps are the best recourse; because they're reclusive loners, they don't spread poison to others.

Re: Myth of the Brown Recluse

#109

Post by cgriswald »

orthecreedence wrote: post #104
cgriswald wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central Minnesota is basicaly dangerous wildlife free if you except disease-carrying ticks (and now maybe the mosquitos?) and don't consider non-predators dangerous. I imagine vast swaths of Iowa and eastern Nebraska are similar. Maybe the Dakotas too although I suspect there are a ton of coyotes there. Minnesota has two venomous snakes, black beers, grey wolves, coyotes, and the northern black widow, but none of the…

(Northern) Minnesotan here. Don't forget moose! I'd much rather see a black bear in the woods (and I have, several times, even a mama with her cub) than a moose. They will stomp you to death, sometimes just for fun.

Oh yeah. I forgot the smaller wild cats too. I think moose are probably the scariest animal Minnesota has outside the zoos. Maybe deer or cows if you're driving...

Re: Myth of the Brown Recluse

#110

Post by partiallypro »

mikestew wrote: post #86
justjash wrote: post #34

Yep, tons of spider in Missouri... I used to be somewhat freaked out about brown recluse spiders as a child but now as an adult I could care less. There is one with a web setup in my basement that I walk by every day, I just let it be since there is a pile of dead bugs under the web. I remember one kid in high school got bit and had a nasty necrotized spot on his ankle, other than that I have only heard of a few peop…

As far as black widows go, I have only seen/caught a couple of them and never heard of anyone being bit by one. You need to get a bit east, say, North Carolina. You'll want to look carefully when pulling up those old pieces of wood out by the shed. Wear gloves.

I think Black Widows are more common in the American South West than anywhere else. I'm in Tennessee and brown recluse spiders are very common, but I've only ever seen one black widow, ever. Black Widows are less aggressive afiak and are usually outdoors. Brown recluse love cardboard boxes and storage areas, indoors...so their bite is more common.
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