- Joined
- May 7, 2005
- Messages
- 731
Unfortunately, you're right with this.
But, anything other (like the facts you posted) wouldn't be „News“ - so what to expect?
I get your point and share it to a limited degree, but i'm pretty over and done with the majority of emotions in regard of „The News“ about toxic spiders. It's futile.
Media isn't interested in facts, its interested in clicks, readers, watchers, whatever. Back in the days i contacted several newspapers when they had published articles about „highly venomous banana-spider found in / at xyz“, yielded zero response. Did surprise me back then.
Contacted one „expert“ who was said to have been the guy to identify the spider in question in one of the articles, got a response (on a weekend day) in just 2 hours.
He had never identified the spider, nor even been shown it and learned from his „deed“ through the press media. Tells you all you need to know.
Big spiders make News. Venomous spiders make even BETTER NEWS.
Most often found Phobia in many countries is, guess what, Arachnophobia. Hell, let's take that and add some Venom to it and we have perfect NEWS.
Nothing more, that's about it.
Interesting how folks are discussing the whole „who's more toxic“-thing again. If you read scientific papers often found free online, maybe even talk to guys who work in according fields, let alone keep some species in the focus of that discussion, you'd find that the whole topic is as interesting as the following question:
What'll kill you quicker a 9mm to the back of the head or a .45 ACP?
Think about it – it's pointless, this way or another.
---------- Post added 08-31-2015 at 09:38 PM ----------
Last thing i remember about Latro-Antivenin is, that medics usually only apply it in extremely severe cases, since the stuff can have severe side-effects. Haven't checked this since years but might be worth investigating in case you want to dig deeper.
In regard of the second sentence quoted: seems that so far only envenomations caused by P. nigriventer required the administration of Anti-Venom, even this in only a minority (in %) of cases. P. nigriventer envenomations are known from Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. If you compare the distribution of the genus, you'll find that apparently no cases of Phoneutrism in other countries than the afforementioned were recorded that required the administration of Anti-Venom.
I'm not aware of scientific evidence, but have reason to doubt that all species of the genus are exactly as toxic as P. nigriventer and most likely P. keyserlingi. In fact, with P. boliviensis available records suggest otherwise and with many, if not most, other species not sufficiently enough data is (at least publicly) available.
