If you are one of the MANY people who are scared of spiders, you will no doubt have been infuriated at some point in you life by the words: “what are you afraid of, it can’t hurt you?”
Of course, your spider phobia has little to do with the rational of whether they can hurt you or not. However, a story this week will give you a smart rebuff the next time your fear is not taken seriously.
Note, anyone with a severe case of arachnophobia should read on with caution. There has apparently been an invasion of poisonous spiders in Britain.
The false widow spider, also called steatoda nobilis or simply the British Black Widow, has been thriving this year due to the warm weather.
The Independent newspaper interviewed one man who counted 50 of them on his garden fence, as well as reporting on another man whose hand turned yellow and black and swelled up after being bitten by a false widow spider while he was asleep.
No one in the UK has ever died from one of these spider bites, but the symptoms can be quite nasty.
Tony Wileman, a conservation ecologist at the London Wildlife Trust, told The Independent: “The severity of symptoms of false widow spider bites depends on how much venom has been injected and reports from false widow spider bites have included symptoms like chest pains and a swelling and tingling of the bite area.”
If you think you see a false widow spider, it’s not recommended that you touch it with bare hands, although there’s probably not many people brave enough to do that anyway!