by Amy Stewart
SIZE:
38 mm (including legs)
FAMILY:
Theridiidae
HABITAT:
Dark, secluded areas, including logs and rock piles, under shrubs and trees, and around woodpiles, sheds, barns, and cellars
DISTRIBUTION:
Nearly worldwide — North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand
The 1935 suicide was unusual not so much for its motive but for its method: a black widow spider bite. The spider was found in a cardboard box under Mr. Liarsky’s bed, along with paperwork indicating that he had purchased her from California and gained assurances that her bite was fatal and incurable.
He died two days later. Hospital officials found a bottle of sleeping pills under his pillow and ruled that the pills, not the spider, were to blame for his death. But it was too late. By that time, the so-called Black Widow Suicide had attracted nationwide attention. Several high-profile reports of black widow deaths started appearing in the news. An investigative reporter in Texas tried to prove that suicide by black widow was impossible by attempting (unsuccessfully) to persuade a black widow to bite him. A committee was formed in Oklahoma to eliminate the spider from the state in the name of protecting the children. In 1939 the London Zoo killed its black widow spiders, along with its venomous snakes and insects, as a precaution against the possibility of their being liberated during air raids.
In 1939 the London Zoo killed its black widow spiders, along with its venomous snakes and insects, as a precaution against the possibility of their being liberated during air raids.
The black widow is perhaps the best known and most widely feared spider in the world. About forty species of Latrodectus can be found around the world in North and South America, Africa, Australia, and Europe. The female’s round, black body is usually (but not always) marked by a distinctive red hourglass shape on the abdomen. The males — small, light brown creatures that bear little resemblance to their wives — don’t bite at all, making them more of an afterthought in the story of these frightful creatures.
Although the spider gets its name from the belief that the females always eat the males after mating, this behavior is seen most often in the Australian species, the redback spider or Latrodectus hasselti. The male works so hard to get the female’s attention that he will sometimes offer his abdomen up as dinner while he attempts to mate with her. He stands on his head, drapes his abdomen across her mouth, and tries to quickly finish the business of copulation while she coats him in digestive juices and starts to nibble. If he’s not fast enough, he will, in fact, die for love.
After a female black widow has mated once, she stores enough sperm to lay eggs for the rest of her life. She’ll create a series of egg cases over her one-to-two-year lifespan, filling each one with hundreds of eggs, although only a few dozen may survive to adulthood. Once the young spiderlings are about three weeks old, they perch in their mother’s web, waiting for a favorable breeze, then release a thin silk thread that allows them to float away in a process called ballooning. They land where the wind takes them and build their own webs.
Black widows are not particularly eager to bite people; they prefer to use their fangs to go after other insects, which they inject with digestive juices, turning their prey to mush and making it easy to drink them down. If they are provoked into biting a person, they inject a tiny bit of venom under the skin, which may cause a pinprick of pain or no pain at all. It isn’t until the venom makes its way to the nervous system that trouble begins. The toxin in a black widow’s venom will cause a kind of painful storm in the nervous system, bringing on muscle pain and cramps. People might get shaky and dizzy, and feel their heart race or dangerously slow down. Some people experience sweating, especially around the site of the bite. Doctors call this syndrome latrodectism after the spider’s scientific name.
The bite is rarely fatal, but bite victims are encouraged to seek treatment for the symptoms, which can be painful and debilitating. In severe cases, victims may receive an antivenin made from the blood serum of horses that has been injected with black widow venom. This venom can only be obtained by “milking” live black widow spiders, a laborious process that involves giving the spiders a mild electrical shock to induce them to eject venom, which is then vacuumed into a narrow tube. The spider often vomits as a result of the electrical shock, making it necessary to set up a dual vacuum system to separate the vomit from the venom as they spew forth from the spider’s mouth.
Black widows do tend to bite when they feel trapped. In the days of outdoor privies, spiders hiding under the toilet seat would attack anything that appeared to block their exit. Fortunately, the introduction of indoor plumbing has made these excruciating bites in the most sensitive of locations a thing of the past.
Meet the Relatives About thirty species of venomous spiders make up the Latrodectus genus. They are part of a large and diverse family of spiders known as cobweb or tangle-web spiders.
PAINFUL
STINGING CATERPILLARS
A twenty-two-year-old Canadian woman on vacation in Peru returned home to find strange bruises on her legs. For four days she watched as they got bigger, not smaller. She was otherwise in perfect health. Her doctor asked if anything unusual had happened on her vacation, and she said that one week earlier, while walking barefoot in Peru, she had stepped on five caterpillars. The pain had been immediate and severe, running up her thigh and making it painful to walk. She also got a headache. But she felt fine the next day and it didn’t occur to her to see a doctor at the time.
After she returned home, the bruises began. Some of them were as large as her hand and getting bigger. Her doctors searched for medical reports of caterpillar stings and realized that a species from Brazil could be to blame. They contacted a hospital there and made arrangements to ship a Brazilian-made antivenin to Canada. It would take two days to arrive.
But on her third day in the hospital — now ten days after the caterpillar sting and within hours of the antivenin’s arrival from Brazil — she went into kidney and liver failure. Her blood wasn’t clotting properly. By the time the antivenin was administered, multiple organs had failed. She died later that day.
Cases of death by caterpillar are extraordinarily rare and limited to just a few known species, but there are many caterpillars who employ painful defenses to protect themselves.
FIRE CATERPILLAR
Lonomia obliqua and L. achelous
These are the species most likely to have killed the Canadian woman. L. obliqua is found in southern Brazil and L. achelous in northern Brazil and Venezuela. The green, brown, and white caterpillars are covered in sharp hairs that resemble tiny cactus spines. They tend to mass together on the ground or on the trunk of a tree, making it possible to be stung by several at once just by walking barefoot or leaning against a tree. The caterpillars release a powerful toxin that causes massive internal bleeding and organ failure. Although the antivenin developed in Brazil is effective, it should be administered within twenty-four hours of the sting, making it critical to seek immediate medical attention.
Brazilian scientists believe that deforestation is bringing more people into contact with the caterpillar. As the jungle trees it prefers get cut down, the caterpillar moves into more populated areas, seeking out fruit trees in orchards as a food source. Over the last decade, public health officials have recorded 444 Lonomia stings, 7 of which resulted in death.
GYPSY MOTH CATERPILLAR
Lymantria dispar
An invasive European moth was to blame for a series of mysterious rashes among schoolchildren in northern Pennsylvania. In the spring of 1981, roughly a third of the children at two schools in Luzerne County suffered from rashes on their arms, necks, and legs. Doctors took scrapings and throat cultures to test for infection, but found nothing. Finally they pulled aside children who didn’t have a rash and interviewed them about the amount of time they spent playing outside in the woods. They asked the
same questions to the children with the rashes and found a high correlation between outdoor play and the outbreak of this mysterious rash. They concluded that the rash had been caused by the gypsy moth caterpillar, which was present in high concentrations in the woods around those two schools.
The rash caused by the long, silky hairs of this caterpillar can be painful, but isn’t known to inflict long-term harm. However, the caterpillars do significant damage to forests. In the last thirty years, over a million acres of hardword forests have been defoliated annually. While the caterpillars may not kill the trees, they weaken them enough to allow diseases to take hold. The caterpillar, and its adult form, the gypsy moth, are both found in Canada, along the east coast of the United States, and as far west as Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, Illinois, Washington, and Oregon.
ARCHDUKE CATERPILLAR
Lexias spp
These beautiful Southeast Asian butterflies are often found in butterfly conservatories and framed butterfly collections. The wings of the adult males are primarily black with patterns of blue, yellow, or white markings. The pale green caterpillars, rarely seen except in their native countries or on butterfly farms, are covered with exquisitely sharp spines that extend outward like the needles of a pine tree. This thorny armor deters predators and protects the young caterpillars from getting eaten by their siblings as they search for food.
PUSS CATERPILLAR
Megalopyge opercularis
Don’t be fooled by the fact that this caterpillar looks just like a tiny Persian cat. The so-called flannel moth or asp moth is one of the most toxic caterpillars in North America. Anyone who rubs up against its long, silky golden-brown hairs will find those hairs embedded under the skin, where they cause severe burning pain, a rash, and blisters. The pain can radiate up the limb, and the most extreme reactions can also include nausea, swollen lymph nodes, and respiratory distress. Most people recover in a day, but in the worst cases it may take several days for symptoms to subside. People who have been stung say that the pain felt like a broken arm or being hit with a hammer. The pain is so intense and unexpected that some people also suffer panic attacks.
There is no specific treatment, other than ice packs, antihistamines, or creams and ointments to soothe the pain. The hairs can sometimes be pulled out by applying tape to the skin, but even this may offer little relief. The caterpillars are found throughout the southern United States in late spring and early summer. The adults, which emerge later in the summer, are also extremely fuzzy, resembling a large, furry bee.
IO MOTH CATERPILLAR
Automeris io
The io moth is a familiar creature in its native range, which extends from southern Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick down through North and South Dakota, into Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, and east to Florida. The moths have large spots resembling eyes on their lower wings, making them a popular subject for nature photographers. But the caterpillars are fascinating as well — and fearsome. These pale green creatures are covered with fleshy nodules, and from each nodule sprouts a cluster of stinging, black-tipped spines. The sting is painful but harmless, although allergic reactions can be severe and may require medical attention.
Don’t be fooled by the fact that this caterpillar looks just like a tiny Persian cat.
SADDLEBACK CATERPILLAR
Acharia stimulea
This short, fat, brown caterpillar has a distinctive green “saddle” that runs across the middle of its back and down the sides, with a dark purple spot in the center. This creature sports groups of spines that protect its head, rear end, and the sides of its abdomen. The sting is usually described as being similar to a bee sting. The saddleback is found throughout the southern United States in spring, and the dark brown adult moth can be seen flying in July and August.
PAINFUL
Bombardier Beetle
STENAPTINUS INSIGNIS
When Charles Darwin was a young man at Cambridge in 1828, he found his passion not in the classroom, but in the outdoors. Like many young Englishmen of his day, he was an avid beetle collector. Hunting for bugs in the English countryside might seem like a fairly tame pastime, but Darwin managed to get into trouble — and make an interesting discovery — during one of his field trips.
SIZE:
Up to 20 mm
FAMILY:
Carabidae
HABITAT:
Bombardier beetles live in a variety of habitats, from deserts to forests
DISTRIBUTION:
North and South America, Europe, Australia, Middle East, Africa, Asia, New Zealand
“One day,” he wrote, “on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one.”
The beetle Darwin placed in his mouth was almost certainly a kind of ground beetle known as a bombardier beetle. Grab one of these insects and you’ll hear a surprisingly loud popping noise just as a hot, stinging spray is ejected from an artillery-like structure on the bug’s rear end.
With the possible exception of flustered collectors who store live insects in their mouths for safekeeping, the bombardier beetle poses little threat to humans. However, its enemies — ants, larger beetles, spiders, even frogs and birds — flee in terror when the bombardier takes aim.
The insect fires repeatedly, like an automatic weapon, ejecting five hundred to one thousand blasts per second at its attacker.
The mechanism by which it engages its enemy would fascinate any weapons manufacturer. In one gland the bombardier stores hydroquinones, a precursor to the very irritating chemical compound 1,4-benzoquinone that it sprays at its enemies. Also in that gland is hydrogen peroxide. The two don’t interact unless they are mixed with a catalyst — and that is exactly what happens when the bombardier comes under attack. The contents of the reservoir are forced into a reaction chamber and mixed with a catalyst that transforms the chemicals and heats them to the boiling point. The reaction creates enough pressure to force the spray out of the reaction chamber with a loud pop. Sophisticated recordings of this phenomenon show that the insect fires repeatedly, like an automatic weapon, ejecting five hundred to one thousand blasts per second at its attacker.
Ironically, the beetle that attacked Charles Darwin has since been used to attack his theory of evolution. Creationists and advocates of intelligent design claim that the beetle’s defense mechanism is too complex to have evolved gradually. Instead, they claim, the system of chambers is “irreducibly complex,” meaning that the individual parts could not possibly have evolved separately through genetic mutation to function together in such an extraordinarily sophisticated manner. One oft-repeated but erroneous claim is that the hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinones are stored separately in the bug’s body, and that if they were mixed, the bug would explode, making it impossible that the chambers could have evolved over time. Entomologists have pointed out the error in this description of the bug’s anatomy; in fact, they are stored together and mixed with a catalyst before firing. They also point out that the various elements of the beetle’s firepower are already present across many species, making its powerful weaponry less improbable than it may seem.
About five hundred species of bombardier beetles are found under boards, bark, and loose rocks throughout the world. At night they scramble about in the open, preferring damp areas. Thanks to their elegant defense system, some can live for several years. The African bombardier beetle, Stenaptinus insignis, is impressive not only for its bright yellow and black markings but also for its ability to swivel its hindquarters up to 270 degrees, allowing it to spray in almost any direction and knock an attacker off its back.
Meet the Relatives There are over three thousand species in this family, found worldwide.
PAINFUL
Brazilian W
andering Spider
PHONEUTRIA SP.
It was a normal day at the Rio de Janeiro airport. Luggage rolled smoothly through the security checkpoint, the X-ray machines revealing the usual assortment of bikinis and sandals and suntan lotion. But the contents of one suitcase brought the entire checkpoint to a halt. Judging from the image on the X-ray machine, the suitcase appeared to hold hundreds of tiny, twisted legs.
SIZE:
150 mm, including legs
FAMILY:
Ctenidae
HABITAT:
Jungles, rain forests, and dark, secluded areas like woodpiles and sheds
DISTRIBUTION:
Central and South America
Someone was trying to sneak deadly spiders out of Brazil. The suitcase was carefully packed with tiny white boxes, each one holding a single live spider. The smuggler was a young Welshman who claimed he was bringing them back to Wales to sell in his spider shop. A complete search of his luggage turned up one thousand spiders in all. He even packed them in his carry-on bag, leading Brazilian security officials to remark that had the spiders escaped and starting dropping down from the overhead bins during the flight, the chaos would have been unimaginable.
The spiders were sent to a laboratory for identification, where it became clear that these were no ordinary arachnids: one of the species the Welshman had collected was the Brazilian wandering spider, believed to be among the most dangerous in the world.
