How often do spiders actually bite people?

Factual Questions
1

Without provocation, that is.

Here’s the story: my best friend, D has some sort of injury to his toe that he swears is a spider bite (before anyone asks: no, he didn’t see the spider or feel the bite… he believes that it happened as he slept, peacefully drooling onto his pillow.). This injury has been bothering him for about a month now, and is only slowly getting better. Externally, this injury is circular, about a half-inch in diameter, has a raised white-colored center, and a reddened ring around the perimeter. Internally (so he says; I’m not gonna go groping this guy’s toes without gloves! Eww!) there is a hardened cyst-like core that is painful when squeezed.

D says that when he squeezes or puts pressure on this injury, he can “feel the neurotoxins” working into his bloodstream. Make of that what you will…

Yeah, I know. It sounds like a zit… but it is not. After a month or so the outward appearance of this injury has not changed, and there is no visible sign of tissue necrosis (as you would expect from, say, a brown recluse bite). D did see his primary care physician a couple of weeks ago, who basically said, “Huh. Leave it alone and let it heal.” with no stated opinion as to cause.

Keep in mind here that D is highly educated, and currently works in bio-tech as an AIDS researcher (he gets to play with stuff like liquid nitrogen and electron microscopes regularly, curse him!), so while he is not a doctor, he is not entirely ignorant on medical matters.

As I said, D is certain that this is a spider bite. It may well be a spider bite for all I know, but it seems to me that it could have been caused by a bite from an insect of some type, a splinter (or other foreign object) that somehow got into his toe undetected and has yet to be ejected through phagocytosis, or any number of other things. Thus arises our dispute, and the reason for this thread: how often DO spiders bite people?

A little history may be in order to help you understand my cynicism: D and another friend of ours lived together a few years ago. Very frequently they would both complain of “spider bites” that they had gotten while asleep. To the best of my knowledge, I have never been bitten by a spider unless I provoked her first (once, I was hassling a mother wolf spider who had all of her little baby spiders on her back… I got my finger too close trying to see how tightly the babies could cling on, and the results were rather painful, if predictable :smack: ). After hearing D and our mutual friend repeatedly (and often!) complaining of “spider bites,” I came to the conclusion that they were both assigning blame for every little insect bite, blemish, zit, ingrown hair, etc. on our poor arachnid cousins.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, there are no spiders that regularly feed on humans (or are there? I’m pretty sure there aren’t…). I could see how a spider might bite you if it was in your bed and you began to roll over onto it or something…

So help me out Dopers! How often do spiders actually bite people unprovoked? Are spiders actually biting D and our mutual friend as often as they seem to think, or are they fooling theirselves? If spiders ARE actually munching on my friends, why aren’t these spiders biting me as well? Do I offend??

2

errr… make that “themselves”. Drat!

3

Double Drat!!

4

AFAIK, spiders don’t usually bite humans unless provoked or under threat.

From this Bureau of Epidemiology newsletter, regarding hobo spider bites and the wound healing time:

So yes, it could be a spider bite on your friend’s toe.

5

Hehe, interesting post.
Unfortunatly I couldn’t tell you about spider bites. To be honest I’ve always thought it was nonsence. Like that whole ‘everyone eats roughly 20 spiders a year, while they sleep’. What’s up with that?!
Of course some spiders will bite sometimes (as you found out :slight_smile: ) but I’ve never known anyone to be bitten by a spider.
Sometimes when the cats have sneaked into my room and left deposits of cat grit and fleas on my bed I get bitten by them. The fleas, mind. Not the grit. My ivestigation into the deposits of cat grit wherever they sleep is proving quite difficult at the moment, as they’ve taken to sleeping outside. Not that it has anythign to do with spiders. Oh, but they do like to eat any spiders they find. Ohhh, it sends shivers down my spine!

Here’s another question to add to your original: Do you think the likelihood of getting bitten by a spider varies a great deal from country to country?

6

Actually, the dispute is not about the toe-wound… it may be a spider bite, as far as I know.

The dispute is about the frequency of spiders biting humans; D and our mutual friend seem to think that they are regularly being chomped on by spiders, while I think this is unlikely.

The real question here is: How often do spiders bite humans without provocation?

7

IMHO your friend pricked his toe on something and it got slightly infected.
Check what the archive has to say on spiders.

8

The other night I was lying on the floor watching Futurama when I noticed movement right next to my arm. A fairly active black spider about 25mm long (including legs) was crawling right next to me. Who knows where it had come from or if it had been on me? (I thought I’d felt a spider web in my hair that fell over my eye earlier, but I generally don’t have a pest problem in my apartment.) I think the spider will have found that hunting is better in the bushes outside. :slight_smile:

9

Dude, you’re weird. We miss you here.

(No, nothing to contribute. I’m just sayin’.)

10

People really don’t experience spider bites all that often. For one thing, we make bad prey. For another, most spiders’ fangs are so small and relatively fragile that they can’t even penetrate thick, tough human skin. Finally, there aren’t many spiders whose venom will affect humans.

Whether or not a spider’s venom will affect you also depends greatly upon your species. For example, the Sydney funnel web spider’s venom is deadly to humans and other primates, but has almost no effect on cats, rabbits, or toads.

11

From here

12

Accidently sat on a very small spider not too long ago. She was quite distressed about being crushed and bit me in self defense. Hurt somewhat like a bee sting briefly so I can’t imagine sleeping through it. Your description of D’s “bite” sounds like a tick to me. Any incidence of Lyme Disease around San Diego?

13

Heard an interesting story on NPR about how spiders (specifically the brown recluse) get a bad rep for biting people. The text can be found here.

14

Ha! Thanks, MrO! And thanks to everyone else for the replies… I’m going to send this thread to D now to see what his reaction is.

As for Lyme disease, Tupug Anachi, the wound does sort of look like the type of bite that would result in that (from what I recall of my knowledge of Lyme disease, that is… I’ll have to look that up again…), specifically the reddened circle around the alleged bite site. Hmm… but it seems to me that the toe would be a very unusual place to find a deer tick bite. As I recall, a tick will tend to head to a more hairy place to snuggle down and begin feasting. As far as I know, D has no Hobbit blood in him.

15

Two things- 1-as to spiders & bites-you do not live in the Brown recluse area, and they are not aggressive. Next, it does not appear to be a Black Widow bite, but those do appear on extremities (the BW isn’t aggressive, but stick your toe in it’s web, and see what happens!). Now, Funnelweb spiders are dangerous & aggressive- but you don’t live “down under”, either. So IANOD, but I’d make an educated guess it is not a “spider bite”.

  1. If the guy is a worker in the Medical field he should know this- but I’ll say it anyway- TAKE THE TOE (and the rest of him, I guess :smiley: ) TO SEE A DOCTOR, AN MD TYPE. PRONTO.
16

Still no word from D as to his reponse to this thread (he’s probably working in the BL3 room, as he usually is during the afternoon).

DrDeth, to reply to your two points: 1) yes, I know we are currently outside the normal range for brown recluse spiders… I merely used that as an example of the type of spider bite that might produce tissue necrosis. 2) he did go see his doctor (who was less than helpful), he also consulted his father (a retired eye surgeon) for what that’s worth… D is considering going to see another doctor soon if it doesn’t clear up.