Just how venomous are Sicarius?

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i think they use nerotoxins of some kind

 

their venom is quite a powerful necrotic type ive had one catch a small lizard and kill it instantly. i checked were the spider pt him and that part was completly liquified

 

If you get bitten you have a problem, but you gotta make sure they can't escape. They can't climb like tarantula's.
I read a lot about dangerous this and dangerous that. The one I have lives in a terrarium in my bedroom. I only open the box for feeding and cleaning up. A sand terrarium is easy to clean with a tea strainer.
The spider isn't dangerous. The careless owner is dangerous.

 

wheres the logic in that? the owner is only a danger to himself. not our problem.

 

This is a very intetesting thread. Thanks for opening it up, Venom.

 

hey blame EMW Black Mamba or whatever.

 

Naw...I leave Black Mambas alone.

 

Very great description of this venom's effect! One further thing to consider is that with all those dead blood cells clotting up everywhere, causing ischemia/infarction, they are probably going to use up a TON of the body's clotting factors, which will then result in the paradoxical simultaneous diffuse clotting and inability to stop bleeding (DIC, disseminated intravascular coagulation), which will certainly exacerbate the aforementioned hemorrhages. Very, very difficult to survive something that gets that bad.

 

The stories about them not being able to climb are not really true either. Where the edges of the enclosures are sealed together with that glue (I don't know the word in english, we just call it kit), it provides enough if a rough surface for it to climb on.

They look adorable when digging, but with that kind of venom and abilities...no thank you.

 

I find it amazing that such a small creature has such a potent venom. I am curious as to where/what type of environment they live in. Maintaining them in captivity seems like to equivalent of keeping a Black Mamba. High risk potential.

 

They're desert dwellers. So when food happens to come by they have to make sure it doesn't escape. They're unbelievably simple to keep and pose absolutely no threat if you use tongs. They're not aggressive and can't climb smooth surfaces.

 

What really scares me is how cheap they seem to be (might be wrong but i just searched over some exchange boards). I just saw some slings of Sicarius terrosus for 18€a piece... They could easily get in the wrong hands for that price

 

Just watched a couple videos on them. Fascinating. I totally understand the interest in them.

 

While this is true, I have seen people who have had issues with sicarius climbing the rubber seal on a terrarium, which I think had collected sand. So perhaps "absolutely no threat as long as you use tongs and make sure that your terrarium is actually composed only of smooth surfaces."

 

Ah ah, said a similar thing once and I've ended lambasted, eh eh :-/

Anyway, man, especially in UK and Poland, there was that (genus) Sicarius rapture, lol. While I found them interesting for less than 5 minutes, I also think they are boring as hell, plus, I like a somewhat attitude. I would take a M.calpeiana anytime, on that sense.

 

So sicarius are basically the inland taipan of spiders? Actually, that fits quite well. Both live in the desert, aren't too aggressive, are rarely seen, are very fast and aren't seen on the surface too much

 

So... the inland taipan of spiders in other words?

 

Hi,

If you're interested in learning more about the venom of Sicarius and Hexophthalma, check out these two articles. There is much more to it than what is in this thread.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3749972/

https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean...rs-Araneae-Haplogynae?redirectedFrom=fulltext

 

Excellent, thank you Rick!

So, if I'm following what I've read correctly (still working through the second link but I'm an engineer, not a biology related field, so I don't understand it in detail but try to follow the main gist), italics for fun and to help point out spiders involved, the Brazilian Sicarius ornatus venom has active effects that match those of Brazilian Loxosceles spp. which confirms it has toxicity in humans and what some of those effects would be.

From the second link:
"However, despite the presence of SMase D like proteins in venoms of several New World Sicarius species, they had reduced or no detectable SMase D activity."

So it points out that there is a difference between presence and activity in that it can be present but not active noting that the African species (Hexophthalma genus, more on that below) venoms' showed high activity levels in previously published papers by the same author(s). I'm curious how it could be present but not active. Anyone know? In layman's terms if possible lol.

Noting that discrepancy about presence not necessarily indicating activity they tested the venom effects against venoms with known effects and compared.

I also noticed that the authors mention an "intraspecific variation" in that the female's venom was stronger than the males in S. ornatus both in observed effects and some kind of testing method.

My takeaway from this, and why you mentioned there is much more to it than what's in this thread, if I haven't completely misunderstood what I've read...

The first link outlines some taxonomy changes that were published in March of this year. It notes Sicarius from the Americas and Africa have an "interesting" taxonomic structure (they used much fancier words, I looked them up, sorta understood, I think lol) which led the authors to resurrect the genus Hexophthalma for the old African Sicarius. Because of their taxonomic structure and the venom potency variation observed between male and female S. ornatus there could be reason to believe that there is variation in the strength of venom between the African and American genera (the venom paper was written about four years before the taxonomy restructure but did specifically mention it in regards to New World species).

Any reason it couldn't have carried over to the Hexophthalma species beyond a single ancestor that didn't have that trait (could be formed through mutation later on though)? If I understood the basics of the genus structure type correctly from the diagrams on Wikipedia about (reciprocal) monophyletic groups.

Or am I so far lost that SAR has been called off? lol