Something to think about

[The Snark]

A quote from a conversation yesterday.

"If you wish to malign and condemn and entire group for the actions of a few individuals, start with homo sapiens. They commit deliberate wanton malicious harmful acts millions of times every day. No other animal, or organism of any sort for that matter, even comes close."

Let's remove the word 'malicious', malice aforethought, making the above applicable to all animals. So where does this leave the group spiders on the harmful list? People are bitten by them all the time. So often that a medically significant bite is extremely rare. The same can't be said for sharks, or the great cats, or snakes, or even dogs or rodents, or the vast majority of other animals where any bite usually is a cause for seeking medical attention: "My gerbil bit me! Better get this looked at."

Viewed from this perspective, spiders are right at the top of the most unfairly maligned animals in the world.

Oh yes, what was being discussed was originally what animal bite is it always recommended you seek prompt medical attention? General concensus: humans. Venoms are small change in comparison to the bacteria commonly found in the average human's mouth.

 

[NYAN]

So where does this leave the group spiders on the harmful list? People are bitten by them all the time. So often that a medically significant bite is extremely rare.

I don’t consider spiders to be dangerous. When talking about medically significant genera, I try to use the phrase ‘potentially harmful’. A person can be bitten by any of the most toxic spiders on the planet and have no reaction, a mild reaction, or die. A lot of the time nothing will happen, as shown in a test done with Latrodectus where females inject venom around 50% of the time. If you get venom a lot of the time you just require symptom management. Overall, there’s no certainty to what will happen. This goes for any venomous animal. Everything is potential.

Calling spiders deadly is a big pet peeve of mine also. There are 0 deadly species of spider, that is that there are 0 spiders that reliably kill people who are bitten on a regular basis. Phoneutria have a .5% fatality rate in one study with a sample size of 500+. The last death from a Latrodectus in the US was in the 1980s. The last death from any funnel web spider in Australia was in the 1980s. In the countries with the most toxic species you have amazing access to healthcare, maybe discounting some of the countries with Phoneutria in their range. I think Loxosceles and maybe Latrodectus probably kill the most because they are found in human habitation more often and they inhabit places with very poor healthcare. They are also the most widespread.

W
This can be applied to any animal. You have venomous snakes like the russel’s and saw scales vipers that kill tens of thousands of people yearly. They are no where near as toxic as the Australian species of Elapids. This is because they inhabit South Asia and Africa where the access to healthcare is poor and people use traditional remedies.

The same goes for scorpions. The Indian red scorpion is nowhere as toxic as some of the Leiurus and Androctonus species but kills many more. Although many of these super toxic genera also kill a lot of people still. A lot of these scorpions are found in close proximity to humans in places with poor healthcare.

lThe same can't be said for sharks, or the great cats, or snakes, or even dogs or rodents, or the vast majority of other animals where any bite usually is a cause for seeking medical attention: "My gerbil bit me! Better get this looked at."

Yes and no. Shark bites are pretty rare compared to the rest. I don’t know much about great cat bites. I think I read that dogs kill 250+ people a year in the US. I also read there’s like 40,000 injuries to go along with that. Cat bites are also pretty terrible because of bacteria. You can argue that these animals are more widespread then medically significant spiders and snakes though.

Snake bites are more dangerous because the venom is better designed to work against mammals and vertebrae day rather than invertebrates. You also have quantity of venom injected. An adult snake can easily inject 3-500ml of venom that is a large mix of toxins. A Latrodectus can inject pretty much a drop of venom that only has a single toxin that works against people effectively.


Anyway, hope you all enjoy my dissertation. Back to feeding my widows and recluses..