Each year, thousands of people accuse brown recluse spiders of hanging around their houses, stalking them, biting them and causing horrible wounds–but that hardly ever happens. It’s time to set the record straight.
1R. Vetter, N Hinkle, and L. Ames (2009) Distribution of the Brown recluse spider (Araneae: Sicariidae) Georgia with comparison to poison center reports of envenomations. Journal of Medical Entomology, 46(1): 15-20
2R. Vetter, D. Barger. An infestation of 2,055 brown recluse spiders (Araneae: Sicariidae) and no envenomations in a Kansas home: implications for bite diagnoses in nonendemic areas. J Med Entomol, 39 (2002), pp. 948–951
3J. D. Joslin. Regarding suspected brown recluse spider envenomation case report. J. of Emergency Medicine, 43(2), p 348
4T.J. Dominguez. It’s not a spider bite, it’s community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. J Am Board Fam Pract, 17 (2004), pp. 220–226
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By Roar and Katie McKissick. AKA Beatrice the Biologist, McKissick is a blog and science comic that hopes to make science fun and interesting for the casual reader. Visit www.beatricebiologist.
This is brilliant and I’m so inspired to see this…. Thank you for putting this together! I’m on a crusade to help dispel myths about spiders: e.g., http://arthropodecology.com/2012/02/15/spiders-do-not-bite/ and http://arthropodecology.com/2013/06/13/update-spiders-still-dont-bite/
Nice, congratulations! This will help to change the view and the myths surrounding these small and fantastic creatures.
I’ve never dealt with a brown recluse, but I know a cousin who was bitten, captured the live spider, and took it with him to the hospital. He has a permanently discolored weird patch of skin.
While I agree that most “recluse bites” are not recluse bites, this seems pretty bold and absolute, and thus incorrect.
Furthermore, I know multiple people who’ve received spider bites, but they frequently deal with spiders. Generally, they’re not threatening bites, and so they don’t bother reporting it.
Still, at the end of the day, spiders DO bite, and I DO know someone who has dealt with a brown recluse bite, so this entire article makes me pretty sad.
Just to be sure, did your cousin or any of these people actually watch the spider bite them? Did they feel the bite as it occurred? Is that what they actually reported? Or, did they find the wound, and then find the spider?
The thing is that according to everything I’ve read, there are no RECORDS of actual brown recluse spider bites, none that are conclusive. And, they’ve done tests with these spiders’ bites in the labs, and they have found that they do not consistently cause the festering wound that they are blamed for. And, that wound can be caused artificially, without the spider. What they have found, actually, is that MRSA is waiting on your skin for a puncture to happen, and then it takes hold and infects the wound. This has been tested, and can be reproduced in the lab.
Witnessed the bite???? Are u kidding? This is the prob with the entire country. Are u a spider lawyer?
This comment made me laugh SO HARD
You’re right, I’m getting really tired of these spider lawyers defending obviously premeditated attacks on humans. It is a shame we never hear about this on Faux News…
Love it! Faux News. <3
<3
I once picked-up what was probably a BR in a long-vacant house. It was crawling on my hand as I tried to photograph it (I have a friend who is a spider-specialist) The spider, for no apparent reason, leaned-down, sank its fangs into my knuckle, pooped, and took a quick flight with a fast stop. Two days later, an itching welt. Four days later nothing.
Funny and mostly true, but it doesn’t mean a brown recluse bite can’t happen. And they DO hide in your shoes…and clothes, and towels, and blankets, and work gloves. I know from experience with another recluse species, the Desert Recluse (Loxosceles deserta) which pretty much infested my house where I grew up in the Mojave Desert (the ID was confirmed when I brought some specimens to the head of the entomology department at the University of Redlands), and I found them in all of those places multiple times. However, to be fair, even though I saw them almost every day for close to 20 years, I was never bitten by one – or at least, if I was, it didn’t greatly affect me. They do live up to their name, so bites are probably exceptionally rare.
Unless, of course, you lie in curitiba, where brown recluses ARE that common. And when a bite does happen I promise it doesn’t look like what most people think it does
but they don’t live there :(
Wonderful work! Please keep up the good work! :)
I have suffered a Brown Recluse bite to my forearm in southern California 1981. I almost lost my arm from elbow down. What started as a small pimple in 2 days grew to a red/yellow/green/purple/black “bullseye” appearing infection the size of a silver dollar. The 4th day found me in an isolation room with 3 litres of green/yellow pus draining out of a painfully excised wound. Day 5 and day 6 I was treated in a hyperbaric chamber to prevent gas-gangrene from eating away the healthy flesh. After 10 days in the hospital with intensive intravenous antibiotics and excruciating self debridement (cutting off the dead tissue so close to healthy tissue to make it bleed), I was released with a CDC documented severe to life threatening L.reclusa bite and large round scar. Luckily the emergency room physician happened to also be an entomologist and poison control official, otherwise my nickname could be “Lefty”! Yes they bite, Yes they can be severe, Yes sometimes the experts forget!
KR, why did they put you in an isolation room?
There are no brown recluses in California… You had a staph infection
I too suffered a bite in the 1970’s. MRSA unknown at the time. I had the bite in the bend behind my knee, and it was possible I came into contact with one of the spiders after I had slept outside. I ended up with weeks of treatment. I didn’t have any idea it was a spider bite because by the time I went in a red line was going up my leg and I was ill from it and the necrotic tissue in the middle of the wound. The doctor felt that it was a recluse wound. I do not seem to have further problems after antibiotics from the secondary infection but it took forever for it to heal.
[…] Maggie Koerth-Baker You do, however, have MRSA. An adorable cartoon at the new blog BuzzHootRoar draws attention to something I’d never […]
[…] You do, however, have MRSA. An adorable cartoon at the new blog BuzzHootRoar draws attention to something I’d never heard of before — a lot of the time, when your doctor thinks you’ve been bitten by a poisonous spider, you’ve actually been infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria. No spider involved. And the cartoon comes with citations, which is lovely. […]
Re: KR White
The myth of the brown recluse in CA is well debunked by this article:
http://spiders.ucr.edu/myth.html
Short version is there have been less than 10 identified in CA ever, usually associated with a shipment of some sort or travel. And never one confirmed with identification of the actual spider involved, case of a brown recluse bite. Although necrotic wounds are still blamed on them, there are lots of other causes of necrotic wounds.
It is a long article, but worth the read.
I am trying to move from appreciating to actually liking orb weavers and I want to learn to manage my local spiders. Dr. Vetter’s web site at UC Riverside does not have pictures on the home page, so we arachnaphobes can read without our fear response interfering with our learning. Bless you for that Dr. Vetter. The deeply held terror that causes some of us to scream and dance and stomp at the sight of a spider must have evolved for some reason though.
Orb weavers….lovely, lovely spiders, in a scary way. A couple of summers ago, I had one that moved into my decrepit garage and spun a web that had one anchor on the windowsill of a very large window. You couldn’t have planned a better way to show off her web. She was a beautiful corn-yellow with black accents. Whenever I had to fetch something from the garage, I would be mesmerized by the sunlight gleaming from her web and her gorgeous colors. She was as bright and plastic-looking as a Matchbox car. I felt like a character from ‘Empire of the Ants’: “Yes, my queen…”
I’m with BG on KR White’s story.
Unless an actual spider was seen biting, it’s much more likely that what KR White got was a bacterial infection in a lesion caused by something else. That is *exactly* what this graphic is about: doctors throw about “spider bite” as a cause for these sorts of wounds without any grounds to do so. Most doctors can’t even tell a spider from an insect.
I am a clinician (PA-C) who works in the Emergency Department. And I see lots of Staph infections. The patients come in complaining of spider bites. I have given up trying to educate about how unlikely that is, particularly since we don’t have brown recluses in Western Washington.
What I say now is: “I don’t know what punctured your skin or otherwise disrupted its integrity, but bacteria have gotten in and are causing an infection.”
And the ER staff has a chuckle about the epidemic of biting spiders.
I don’t think it is the medical establishment that is giving spiders a bad name.
Ditto. I’m an ER nurse, and our docs nearly always tell patients (after hearing their story) that they almost definitely weren’t bit by a brown recluse, and then go on to treat an infection if suspected.
I was bitten by a recluse in 1993 while weed eating around a woodpile. Did not know what had happened. Had a almost dime sized lesion that looked like a cigarette burn on my inner arm. I developed a rash over my body with fever. Went to ER three times. No dr knew what it was. Saw an Indian Dr and he diagnosed a brown recluse after looking at it. Said it would continue to necrotize the tissue has I not come in He gave me some medication and it cleared up in a few days. Still have faint white patch of skin where bite was. He said I must have swung it up with the weed eater and when I smashed it between my arm and my side of my chest I was bitten. It was not a good experience. So there are some drs out there who do know.
I agree with Jonathan. I too was taught in medical school “patients will come in reporting they have a spider bite, but it is probably a Staph aureas abscess (maybe MRSA)”.
I absolutely love this. I have a confirmed bite scar around my ankle from a brown recluse that was in my boot (happened in 1999). I understand how rare bites are, and the topic of spider bites and misdiagnosing them is a major area of discussion on Spiders.us. Thanks for creating this.
I work as an ER doc, and I agree with Jonathan above. We see this almost daily. I don’t know of any medical provider that defaults to the diagnosis of spider bite. It is the patient who blames the spiders, not the provider. I always tell the patient that it is not a spider bite, unless they witnessed the actual bite, which almost never happens. Brown recluse bites are exceedingly rare, and when they do happen it is quite devastating. Spiders do get a bad reputation, but every doctor I know of works to clear up the misunderstanding the patient has and educates the patient on staph infections, and particularly MRSA.
My house has a lot of spiders, and actually ALL of them are brown recluse spiders. I have a serious infestation, and I’ve been here for 10 years. None of them have ever bitten me. A few months ago, one WAS literally in my shoe, just like everyone always warns you about. I have always taken care to shake out my shoes and check before putting them on, and I’ll be damned, a BROWN RECLUSE spider fell out of one of them. I kid you not. So yes, they actually do infest houses, they are PLENTY common—at least in my house—but so far, I haven’t been bitten… but I am extremely paranoid about it so I take precautions!
My father was bitten by one on his back, and it was a very nasty bite. It wasn’t MRSA, it literally was a brown recluse. He sat on it in a wicker chair, and we found the crushed dead body. It WAS a brown recluse spider.
So there.
It wasn’t a brown recluse.
Brown recluses cannot bite people through clothes so socks and shirts are protective.
I know the point of this post was not necessarily to teach people how to identify brown recluse spiders, but Loxosceles spp. have such a unique eye arrangement compared to most other North American spiders (6 eyes arranged in 3 pairs!) that it would have been a great touch to include that detail in your illustrations. At the very least, it would have gotten a hearty nod of approval from your fellow spider-loving biologists ;)
Geo, if you didn’t know what had happened, how do you know that it was a recluse (or any other spider) other than a doctor telling you? The fact that he treated a necrotizing wound doesn’t necessarily mean that his diagnosis of spider bite was correct….
I am a nurse and would LOVE to print this graphic as a poster for my clinic. Can I have permission?
As an ER nurse, if I had $10 for every patient that came in saying they had a spider bite that actually was a spider bite……..I’d be broke.
[…] Did that spider really bite you? (infographic) […]
I went in with a spider bite, and was told it was MRSA and treated as so, however symptoms got worse and ended going to another Dr who sent me to a surgeon. When I walked in the surgeon said you have a spider bite. You went to the dr? They must have treated you for MRSA… Idiots. Thanks to the surgeon I still have a face!
When you say that “they’re not that common,” that is misleading. I am a retired professional zoologist with considerable knowledge concerning terrestrial arthropods, including spiders, and I made a point of learning how to tell Brown Recluses from all other species. For all I know, they may be uncommon in many or most of the places they occur, but in some houses here in eastern Kansas they can be very, very common indeed. This was the case with the house I currently occupy when I first moved into it a few years ago. Something must have changed in the ecology of these premises since I moved in, though, because I rarely see them now. I have a friend here in the same town and who has another species, similar in appearance, to the Brown Recluse, in her house–we’ve never seen an actual Brown Recluse there, however. She doesn’t like spiders but I’ve convinced her not to harm the ones she has, on the hypothesis that it is keeping the Brown Recluses from living there, through competitive exclusion of some sort.
Ok, so I had a spot on my thigh with two punctures in it that continued to swell over a couple day period. I went to the doctor to see what it was and he said it was a Brown Recluse bite. I did not see the spider… but did have to take antibiotics and “keep an eye on it” to make sure it didn’t get too bad. It did get pretty nasty, but not as bad as I expected and I do still have a quarter sized scar. I love spiders and will catch most of them by hand and put them outside. I have had other suspected non-nasty spider bites as the above doctor said that they could be recognized by two distinct punctures together (fang marks…) which to me always made sense. I am very familiar with many types of insect bites (as I spend a lot of time outside and have also spent many months in the rainforest in Peru). I know that when these two holes appear together that they are not mosquitos, ants, bees, wasps… as they all create a different type of reaction for me and the holes are always pretty close together- like 1-3 mm- and look different than when an ant or something bites you twice in the same area. Are you saying that since I did not see the spiders bite me, that they was NO WAY these were made from spiders? What else would have caused this type of bite? As for MRSA, I’m not sure, but I thought that there was a way to test for that. Are the people that are being diagnosed with brown recluse bites (whom you say are instead infected with MRSA) actually being tested for that? And as you said, if one has a nasty wound, staph can set in. So one could possibly have staph that showed up due to a spider bite right? I do find it odd that I have had MANY MANY wounds, bites, punctures, scrapes, burns…. and the only time I had the type of reaction that looked like what you are calling MRSA, also happened to be the only time I was diagnosed with a brown recluse bite. I’m glad that you are trying to help people understand spiders and I also do the same when I hear of someone killing them or freaking out about them, but I’m not so sure that a SPIDER DID NOT BITE ME.
I’m still killing every brown spider I see. If it’s a spider and it’s brown, it’s a dead spider. I’m not taking any chances.
@Art You are an idiot for killing all brown spiders. I hope something much bigger than you kills you one day. Your ignorance and fear is ridiculous and disgusting.
From “What to Do About Bites and Stings of Venomous Animals”, by Robert E. Arnold, M.D ” page 20, “Bites of the brown recluse spider do not constitute an emergency. There is no pain or so little pain that most of the time, the victim is not aware that he is bitten. A few hours later a pinful, red area with a mottled cyanotic center appears, A morbilliform macular rash sometimes occurs. Necrosis does not occur in all bites, but usually after 2 or 3 days inpending necrosis is evident in an area of dicoloration that does not blanch with finger pressure. The center becomes indurated, and there is marked surrounding erythema. The centra ischemia becomes stellate, and the area turns dark and becomes mummified in a week or two. The margins separate and the eschar falls off leaving an open ulcer. The edges of the ulcer are undermined becuase the toxin has more effect on the superficial fascia than on the skin. Secondary infection and regional lymphadenopathy usually become evidentant at this stage. This is the point at which most bites are first see by a physician. …. Many other insect and arthopod bites cause local necrosis, most notably the venomous tick, the parjaroello. It is entirely possible that many bites ascribed to brown recluse spiders may actually be from some other insect. Clinically, the outstanding feature of brown reclues bites is that the ulcer does not heal, but persists for weeks or months. Physical examination reveal a hard indurated area of skin and superficial fascia with undermined edges. ”
And Dr. Arnold is right about this subject of posions creatures not being covered by typical medical text. I went to the doctor last week after being stung by a puss catipillar and the doctor gave me a responce as unbeliving and insensitive as tone of the cartoon above. She said it was not covered in her medical texted so she google it. Why would I pay a dr to do that? I guess that is really what I’m still pissed about. But why wouldn’t you believe someone was bit by a brown recluse? Sounds like we all know some one who it has happened to and it is super scarry. Not everyone out there is an idiot.
I really enjoyed this article and the posts above. That being said, brown recluses do bite, and it’s extremely painful after the fact. I spent a full week in the hospital on constant IV antibiotics fighting this off. Granted, this happened to me while I was sleeping in the woods on the ground while in the army in 2001 at Fort Polk in their environment. I know what I went through and the issues it caused, that’s why when I hear people say they’ve been bit by one and never experienced what I have, that they are either attention hungry or misinformed. I’ve got no resentment towards the spider, but through my experience I’m more cautious.
I work with a guy who had to have surgery to remove a golf ball size chunk of flesh from his leg. It started out as a mosquito bite looking mark. Within 6 days the wound was huge and the tissue was dieing and had to be removed. He is wearing a vacuum pump attached by suction cup to his leg to keep it clean until he gets a skin graft. The doctors assumed spider bite because, well, because, SPIDER!
This sounds even nastier, and you can’t blame a little creature for it!
Bees normally buzz in the key of A, but when they are tired, they buzz in the key of E.
While a lot of things shown to me as a “spider bite” weren’t, I’ve seen the results and they are pretty rough. And yes, brown recluse spiders are quite common in some parts of Kentucky. Oddly enough, they are often found near black widows as well, at least in my experience, which doesn’t make much sense to me, save that they both like cozy spots like abandoned houses, etc. So perhaps it was a black widow that bit some of those folks? Does it really matter? This claim that “you weren’t bit by a spider” is kind of silly. How about you come to my old stomping grounds in KY and we’ll see about getting you all the bites you’ll ever want.
Thanks for the warning. I have seen four or five black widows on my wooded property in MD and have alot of downed trees with their bark just dying and drying. Need to learn about their habitat and how to discourage both species from getting in or near my house. Why wouldn’t a threatened animal bite if it could?
Dr. Vetter is a world expert on Brown Recluse spider bites. He isn’t pulling this stuff out of nowhere. He’s spent over 20 years investigating spiders blamed for bites and looking at the stats. The fact remains that most complaints of spider bites are unsubstantiated. Period. Even if you see a spider penetrate your skin with it’s chelicerae, you may react badly to the bacteria on the chelicerae or some bacteria that was on your skin surface, but not the venom from the spider bite itself. This is a reaction to a bacterial infection and not the spider. He certainly knows where these spiders live and that they do occur in certain areas. The point is that spider bites are blamed for so many ailments, very few of which they caused.
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after reading all of this its now its clear brown recluse spiders have MRSA, as monkeys in Africa caused AIDS. the only thing i cant figure, is why would the CIA give the spiders MRSA?
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WOW just what I was looking for. Came here by searching for cartoon
sex
[…] A Spider Did Not Bite You – Buzz Hoot Roar explains, with the help of adorable little cartoon spiders, why a brown recluse is probably not responsible for your “bite.” (Speaking of brown recluses, I always thought this was funny.) […]
This is a great illustration of the Brown Recluse. I love it! But I only have one problem. I think you should point out what a Brown Recluse actually looks like. It’s one of a few spiders with only three pairs of eyes instead of four. But that’s not illustrated too well in this. I think the main problem is people say every brown small spider is a Recluse, but if awareness is raised about what it actually looks like maybe that can help more people out with identification.
[…] It’s more likely to be MRSA. No, that’s almost certainly not a brown recluse bite. […]
Love this comment:
“And, they’ve done tests with these spiders’ bites in the labs, and they have found that they do not consistently cause the festering wound that they are blamed for”
Oh, so they do bite, and they do cause festering wounds … but not consistently. Soooo it can’t possibly be true at any point in time in history unless it happens 100% of the time.
That’s like the opposite of “sixty percent of the time, it works every time.”
[…] their mysterious lesion diagnosed as a spider bite by their doctor, who they trust as an expert. This comic nicely sums up why the vast majority of the time, it is safe to assume that a spider did not bite […]
[…] their mysterious lesion diagnosed as a spider bite by their doctor, who they trust as an expert. This comic nicely sums up why the vast majority of the time, it is safe to assume that a spider did not bite […]
Okay, I was bitten by a large spider before, I saw it drop out of my clothes I was putting on. it bit above my hip. I went to the dr n he said it was not a spider bite but some kind of rash. When I told him id seen the spider n everything. This is absurd, saying everyones wrong that they’ve been bitten. There are quite a few spiders in the world, its pretty easy for someone to get an insect bite. N these huge wounds on people from a brown recluse, in tons of pictures, are not imaginary. People that claim they are have serious mental problems.
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From someone who is allergic to spider bites, all I can say is GO TO HELL. Spiders love me and have attacked me quite a few times in my life. A few were brown recluse. I now carry an EPIPEN. Doctors often do tell you that people that they were not bit by a brown recluse. I have gone to the ER with my entire face swollen up with my eyes swollen shut. This cartoon is not being helpful at all. The only good information on spider bites is in the MERCK MANUAL. The only people who understand at at the poison control hotline.
What doctors aren’t saying this? I have worked for several and every one of them has reassured his or her patients of this very fact AND is well-versed in a multitude of insect, spider and animal bits and injuries. Don’t jump to conclusions that doctors don’t do their research or that you know more about a medical issue than they do.
Also one thing to point out, the brown recluse bears a striking resemblance to the male version of the Southern House Spider ( Kukulcania hibernalis). The key to identification is the violin shaped mark on the cephalothorax of the recluse. That is how you distinguish the spider from the others.
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This made me laugh. I went into the doctor with a bad case of cellulitis and everyone that saw my wound, the first question was always, “did you get bit by a spider?” Even the specialist who finally diagnosed it as a complication of Lymphedema, I had to convince first that it wasn’t a spider bite.
Years ago, as a teen, I was visiting a relative in West Virginia. I left my jeans in a heap on the floor and when I grabbed them to pull them on again, a large brown spider ran out of the pants where it had been hiding, up my leg, biting me as it went, and scuttled away. I chased it but didn’t catch it.
When the bite became a giant festering hole, we naturally assumed the spider had been a brown recluse. There was a problem with my medical insurance, so I had to debride the hole myself and it was just a big ordeal until I could finally see a doctor, who told me that it was good I had taken the steps I had or they would probably have had to cut a piece of my leg out. At no point did they tell me that it probably wasn’t a brown recluse, but rather a staph infection that got in when some random brown spider bit me. I WISH THEY HAD.
That was the first warning that I had a problem with staph being able to get into my skin. Since then, I have gotten a condition where staph regularly makes giant holes in my legs. I don’t have diabetes or do drugs or anything like that, my personal hygiene is just fine, there’s just something about my skin that lets staph get in through even microscopic tears. So far I haven’t found anyone who can treat it or explain it. They just give me antibiotics which don’t do anything.
So in my case, a spider DID bite me AND I do have staph.
All I can say is read Dr. Ritter’s whole paper, the details are in his footnotes.
He says in the footnotes that they can come into the state on trucks and in items from other states. I was bitten and now my Cardiologist is starting to believe because at the site of the bite it looks like multiple blood clots (DIC) all thru my legs. I’ve had 3 stents in my leg plus a bypass. Before I was bitten I would do reps of 1200 lbs. in sets of 50 on a trust bench. After the bite it took me 6 months to be able to walk a mile. I never had MRSA. On the third day after the bite I was black and blue and had alligator skin from my feet to my neck. My temp spiked at 105 of and on and I was out of it for a week
[…] lurk in every crevice and unoccupied shoe, ready to chomp down on us, most evidence suggests it doesn’t happen that often. And who can blame us? Some of us may even be genetically predisposed to fear spiders. That […]