How bad is a bite from cupiennius salei?

[Stefan2209]

I'm surprised to see people i do well respect posting quite some rather mediocre statements here.

Check the sources cited by Wikipedia, e.g. Vetter, the article is publicly available.

To quote from it:

Venom Toxicity and Risk. Barth (2001) lists experience with bites by C. salei, C. getazi, C. coccineus and C. panamensis Lachmuth, Grasshoff and Barth with minimal symptom development. One bite by C. coccineus resulted in intense bee sting-like pain during fang penetration, and significant pain and numbness for the first 10 min or so, becoming asymptomatic within 30 min (Barth 2001).

Sources for the corresponding quotes out of the publications cited are given in the original paper.

Some people here seem to be on some kind of witch-hunt?

Cupiennius is harmless, the genus is not known to possess medically significant toxicity.

For a private keeper to my opinion even more important: these spiders are extremely hesitant to bite, even if given reason to do so.

 

[Mossae]

Thanks Stefan!

 

[Mossae]

Thanks Stefan!

Work has been way too crazy lately to find the papers I talked of earlier, chef life Oo sucks

 

[Quixtar]

In addition to anaphylaxis, the people who die from bee stings generally aren't only stung by one bee, but by many.

 

[The Snark]

In addition to anaphylaxis, the people who die from bee stings generally aren't only stung by one bee, but by many.

However, ever encountered a single sting of a patient with an acute allergy? Unreal. Went on a call. ~20 yr old male, single sting behind the knuckle. Arm swollen to the shoulder, pitting edema, unable to flex elbow, epi x3 to prevent full respiratory arrest. Don't underestimate allergic reactions.

 

[nieksluys]

Cupiennius species (and a lot of other Ctenidae that are difficult to ID properly without a lot of info to be found) have a very potent neurotoxin... for their prey, its well known nowadays that the only Ctenidae with potent venom are those of the Phoneutria genus, and because of a lack on info online, often people base assumptions when they look at how fast the prey dies, when Cupiennius or Ctenids from Africa bite their prey they often die very fast, and thus they come to the conclusion that therefore the spiders must be very harmfull to humans... not true, often invertebrates bitten by Phoneutria die quite slow in comparison to invertebrate prey bitten by other ''less toxic'' species, yet Phoneutria are much more potent for mammals. so yeah, the worst case ive seen described by a person bitten by a Cupiennius, was a swollen arm, quite painfull aparently, but nothing to worry about, but that was the worst case ive seen documented, other reports speak of more of a ''tingling'' (sorry, english is not my native language'' sensation or local swelling, or pain experience comparable to a bee sting.

still, lets not forget that allergic reactions can occur, and it's better to avoid getting bitten at all (naturally of course...) still i keep multiple species of Cupiennius, and only once i have seen as much as a bite when i had to transfer a subadult female... the bite lasted for aproximately 0,5 seconds before it darted away, so you must be very unlucky or very unexperienced to get bitten by one.


cheers, Niek