#im not dealing with the vile customers or horrible owner

[theonetrueyeet]

spider ramble... particularly about false widows

in a Mood™ abt spiders currently, ESPECIALLY false widows. been going back over my arachnid section of the invertebrate module bc i have exams soon and its late and im frustrated abt how false widows get portrayed by the media and percieved by the british public... this is gonna be long and rambly and probably not make much sense and go off in a million and one diff directions sorry i just feel like talking abt spiders. this also came about bc of the big fuckoff house spider that was in my room last night on the top of my door frame but since it was late (like. midnight) and also out of my reach i went eh. ill deal with it in the morning. and then i woke up in the morning and no more spider to deal with! which i should be more stressed about i feel but im so exhausted from the run up to exams and other life stuff that im just like ok cool thats Around somewhere now ig. im guessing it was a female from the size but i cant be sure... anyway without further ado onto the main show.

so here in the uk we arent exactly known for our venomous animals. we have some but they're nothing really that dangerous (to us as humans at least. im not going into venom-prey specificity rn ive had ENOUGH of that recently). we have the european adder (which is also percieved as terrifying bc its a venomous snake but it poses very little risk to us as humans bc they are very shy and i have a lot to say abt adders but thats for another day), wasps, bees, some venomous fish (didnt know this until i found one rockpooling they r pretty neat), even some stinging jellyfish and siphonophores like the portuguese man o war. and then we have the spiders. all species of spider are venomous (minus the uloboridae family, aka the cribellate orb weavers which im not too sure off the top of my head if we have those in the uk... we might have one or two species?? idk but they arent venomous and i think theres another family that has some non venomous spiders BUT THE POINT IM MAKING IS PRETTY MUCH ALL SPIDERS ARE VENOMOUS). there are 650ish spp of spider in the uk and of those VERY FEW are at all medically significant. of these few are the rabbit hutch spider, the cupboard spider, and... the noble false widow. these 3 spiders are all known as false widow spiders. we also occasionally get the meditterreanean false widow, but to my knowledge these only arrive on imports and dont have a population within the uk.

belonging to the genus steatoda, false widows are usually seen as these terrifying death spiders that will kill you just for looking at them when really... they arent actually that dangerous. most cases of bites being severe are either a) a result of an allergy or b) it was actually caused by something other than the bite itself (such as a bacterial infection in the bite, or the "bite" not actually being a bite) or even c) greatly exaggerated by the tabloids (shocker)... like ok we dont have many scary animals in the uk but. we dont need to overexaggerate the ones that really arent as bad as people think! badgers probably pose more of a threat to you than a false widow does. have you seen a badger?! they look so cute but they are VICIOUS those things will FUCK YOU UP and give you TB on top of getting absolutely mauled. a false widow will, at most, just make you feel a bit ill for a couple of days. me personally i would take a falsie over the badger. false widows also only bite in defense! most of the time they bite because you didn't see them and happened to be a very big thing up in their personal space! tbh i would bite too

false widow bites are, to most people, no more harmful than a wasp sting. so its not exactly a fun time but its not exactly the limb destroying death bite that the british media loves to make it out to be. most bites are probably dry bites or have near neglible amounts of venom, so won't cause anything more than a bit of pain. when venom does get involved it gets a bit more complicated bc it depends on how ur body reacts to it. as i said before, most ppl its not much worse than a wasp sting but it can cause things like muscle spasms, sweating, and a raised temperature. it rarely gets worse than that. of course you can be allergic to it which will cause anaphylaxis which is a medical emergency, but this is an exceptional circumstance. most ppl bitten by a false widow will not experience that. the panic over false widows in the uk is a mixture of media-driven mass hysteria and arachnophobia.

anyway in conclusion shoutout brandon collier who did an amazing talk abt false widows during the bhs venom day both at the 2022 and 2023 events both of which i was lucky enough to attend. if i cant go to venom day this year you will see me on the news.

#spiders #false widow #ramble #nixxy's animal talk #making that a tag because this will happen again soon probably #all this being said #i did use their reputation to my benefit last summer #there was one on the outside kitchen door at the cafe i worked in #so in order to not have to go in there #and also to prevent anyone accidentally getting bitten #bc remember i said they bite in defense #being grabbed as someone opens the door would cause them to bite in defense #i told the owner #who told me to not be dramatic #anyway guess who she then asked to deal with the spider on the door handle not 10 minutes later? #me #if im dealing with spiders #im not dealing with the vile customers or horrible owner #as for the beast in my room #i heard it before i saw it #at first i thought oh! #im going crazy again! #and then i looked for the source of the weird tappy scratchy rustly sound and saw one of the biggest spiders i have ever seen #in the uk at least #and that isnt like. a tarantula #tho saying that it was bigger than my friend's new tarantula tho so #new pet ig! #idk where that thing is #ill find it when im packing probably #christ thats a lot of tags