Deadly spider at grocery store
A Brazilian wandering spider, the most venemous spider in the world, was scurrying around a Whole Foods Market in Tulsa, Oklahoma. An employee caught the spider in the produce section and the store called the University of Tulsa. From News On 6:
"Deadly Spider Found At Tulsa Store" (Thanks, Jill Miller!)"Within minutes you will have breathing problems, you'll start to lose control of your muscles, you'll start to drool and within 20 to 25 minutes you'll probably collapse on the floor and die of asphyxiation," said Terry Childs (director of the university's animal facilities)...
Apparently the spider, also known as a banana spider, hitched a ride on some bunches of bananas all the way from Honduras. It turns out it is the kind of thing that happens all the time, but this particular spider is more threatening than most.
"This particular one happens to be one of the most aggressive ones I've actually come across. This thing will actually jump at you," said Terry Childs.
the latest
latest episodes
"This thing will actually jump at you"
horrifying...
..and I bet it was headed right for the dreadlocked white kid working behind the deli counter..
They just reported that there is no anti-venom for this spider anywhere in the state. If you got bit, you'd be dead.
I thought The Mexican Staring Frogs had these under control?
I can attest to the proclivity for spiders to climb onto banana shipments. When I worked in the produce department I quickly learned to get over my fear of exotic spiders. In fact I kept a jar of them behind the counter. Who knew I was so close to death! (maybe)
Day-oh, me say daaay-oh.
Believe it or not, this is much more common than you would like to think.
I work for a company that distributes to Whole Foods, as well as a number of other stores... Out in the warehouse, they keep the bananas in a special air tight chamber and pump gas in there to kill the spiders. Tranantulas are the most common. But, sometimes a few make it thru the process.
Once got a black widow in a bunch of grapes. Or at least, it was a spider of about the right size with a red hourglass on its abdomen, and it skittered out of the grapes when they were washed. Just figured it was an assassination attempt.
Totally Unbelievable - There's a Whole Foods in Tulsa? No way! :-)
Thinning the hippies out I see.
From the wikipedia entry (take it whatever grain of salt):
Aside from causing intense pain, the venom of the spider can also cause priapism - uncomfortable erections that can last for many hours and lead to impotence. The venom may eventually be used in erectile dysfunction treatments. ("Natural Viagra: Brazilian Spider Bite Causes Hours-Long Erection". FoxNews, May 1, 2007. Accessed May 6, 2007.)
Death by boner!
@moriarty:
The same thing happened to me once; my mom had bought one of those cellophane-wrapped grape bunches that they sell at Giant which turned out to contain a black widow. Luckily we noticed the occupant before opening the packaging. The spider had apparently been in there for a while since it had shed its skin a few times; empty exoskeletons were strewn about amongst the grapes.
As I recall, we turned the spider in to the local nature center (benefits of living in rural Maryland).
What's up with bugs? If something 200 times my size comes lumbering towards me, I get out of the way. Bugs? Run vigorously towards it. Although, considering how many times I've leaped out of the way, screaming like, of a skittering bug, its a pretty effective offense.
Having had worked in a produce department for a few years in college, similar things happen fairly often.
More than once my store had pulled black widows out of grape boxes (though our boss nearly jumped out of his skin when we tossed a sealed container with one it on his desk!) and we would get a warning notice from our distribution centers about once a year if/when the number of eight legged friends started coming over in bulk.
Needless to say, putting out a few dozen cases of grapes a day on a busy weekend was a little unnerving from time to time.
Funny that the expert quoted in the article is named Terry Childs. I thought he was still in jail in San Francisco...
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/18/1351205
On a probability scale, Death by Banana spider is rare. That should make the dying person feel better. This problem is as old as shipping Banana's . The Banana market was as brutal as today's Drug Lords, and as cowardly.
I for one welcome our new Spider Overlords.
Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just hap GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
DAYLIGHT COME AND KILL IT WITH FIRE
What bananas? Most of 'em are plantains, not Cavendish, and NOT ONE of 'em are REAL bananas, the Chiquita "Big Mike" Banana I grew up with as a kid in the Forties. Bananas are doomed, not by global warming, but by exotic diseases that have systematically wiped out the best and left us all-powerful American consumers with the dregs. I'm told that even Big Mikes aren't the McCoy, the real OLD stuff that got shipped in at the turn of century.
...Back in Dickecty two we'ed tie a Cavendish to our belts because it was the fashion of the day, the Kaiser had all of the Big Mikes because of the war...
Mom found a mummified tarantula in her banana bunch.
I will miss bananas in 15 years.
@12 Polishq, I think the multiple skins would freak me out more than the spider itself... Also, hello fellow MDer!
@20 Grikdog, I know there's a banana crisis going on, but where I am it's still easy to tell a plantain from a Cavendish... The plantains are still set off to the side as a specialty and are (grumble grumble) more expensive than their bright yellow brethren...
This is why I'm pro-pesticides. Any residue on the skin is getting peeled off, anyhow. Maybe banana trees are harder to spray thoroughly...
And, also from MD. Live in PA now, but...
I question the expertise of the afore mentionned Terry Child, or the assertion a phoneutria fera can kill in half an hour.
First of all, the fastest death by spider bite known today is 15mn for a young child, with a bite by an australian funnel web (atrax robustus robustus).
Notes : most potent venom known, and rarely a dry bite (yes, most of the time when they bite, spiders don't inject venom), and a YOUNG CHILD.
Then... " More people die from the spider's bite than any other spider in the world". Wrong. Granted, the phoneutria's poison is very dangerous and the spider is real agressive (I wonder why the guy was even surprised, phoneutrias and atrax will attack a human being). But the killer queen still is the widow. Smaller, much more frequent by a large scale, and usually you can find it in crowded zones.
This reminded me of an article by the BBC. In a nutshell: The less pesticide we use, the more spiders in your fruit.
Any video of spiders blowing smoke rings?
Once there was a really nasty spider in some grapes from Chile. Didn't find it until I was eating the grapes out of a bowl, and it was in the bowl right near my hand! Luckily, no biting or poisoning occurred.
Seeing as the danger from poisonous spiders is much more immediate and severe than danger of insecticides, maybe they should use them more, not less, in places where things like this live.
I'd burn the store down, just in case this thing brought friends. I'm unabashedly afraid of spiders and if something like that jumped at me, I don't think I'd live to tell the tale.
this'll cure ya
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIml7cPow0E&feature=related
I wonder if it's a Fair Trade spider?
This sux, now I am afraid of the produce section at my favorite grocery store, and at every store now for that matter. I thought organic food was supposed to keep you from dieing! Okay bad joke....
Oh and gotta love the Tulsa media for blowing this a little out of proportion.
Well at least there is someone else out there from little ol Tulsa that reads Boing Boing to have gotten this article blogged. :-)
Tally me banana!
I also worked in the produce section of both Whole Foods and Sunflower Farmers Market, and these guys have come up a few times. I found one once while unpacking some bananas, and I helped identify one that a fellow employee had caught a few months before that. After reading up on them, they started warning the employees. Being young, kombucha-guzzling vegetarians, we could not bring ourselves to kill her, and let her out back. :)
I thought the funnel web was the most deadly?
And if I recall correctly, these guys often dry bite, where-as the funnel web rarely doesn't inject venom.
I only know through research before I started staying at a mate's property in Eastern australia. No funnel webs where I am, thank christ. Arachnophobia - the true, deep, totally irrational phobia - ruined my life for quite a few years.
Local, Fucking, Food, People
Plus, they have marsupials instead of mammals! Weirdos.
I always keep a flat shovel handy whenever bringing bananas home from the grocer for just such an emergency. Never know when you might have to flatten a spider.
Now I'll have to bring the shovel with me whenever I go shopping, damn it.
ZuZu: As someone who is terrified (but loves, really) the creepy crawlies... it sucks.
But thankfully very few of the real nasties live in my neck of the woods. If you want to talk about my neck of the swimming beaches, though... some footage from Jaws was filmed just off the coast from where I am right now. Blue Ringed Octopii. The horror.
6 foot, 7 foot, 8 foot bunch!!
Every time I hear that, I don't think killer spiders, I think killer shrimp.
Yay Banana Spiders! My parents met at the Flushing A&P over a Banana Spider: one of their co-workers had been sent to the Hospital after being bitten and my Mom had to finish setting out the remainder of the banana shipment and my Dad teased her mercilessly that another spider was going to jump out of the boxes at her, and then he asked her out. I owe my existence to a Banana Spider!
The two most venomous spiders in America are the Banana and the Brown Recluse both native to Florida. :(
A beautiful bunch a ripe banana!!
(finally, memorizing the lyrics to that song payed off)
I'd heard of this happening but thought it was mostly B.S. Scary that it's true.
Zuzu@37:
Supposedly from a guide to native wildlife handed out to US military personnel stationed in Australia.
"The non-poisonous animals of Australia
1. Some of the sheep"
So I thought maybe the Wikipedia article would tell us how to identify such a dangerous species.
The genus is distinguished from other related genera such as Ctenus by the presence of dense prolateral scopulae on the pedipalp tibiae and tarsi in both sexes... some species also have red hairs on the chelicerae.
Yeah, real helpful.
@24
I don't see why pesticides would be necessary. Just stick the bananas in an airtight chamber and pump it with deadly gases, leave it or ten minutes. Spiders die, and nothing gets into your friendly local stream.
@47
I would rather not have my bananas put in a chamber of deadly gases. You never know how long that stuff stays.
MooFoo, bananas aren't trees. They're more closely related to grasses or herbs.
/pedant
Scary jumping spider! Scary!
HAHA OMG........ and they were wrong:
From Tulsaworld.com
What was originally identified as a deadly spider found at a Tulsa grocery store may have been a harmless species, a curator from the Tulsa Zoo said Thursday.
The spider was taken to the University of Tulsa on Sunday, where animal facilities manager Terry Childs identified it as a Brazilian wandering spider, one of the most lethal in the world.
After the spider gained media attention Wednesday, Barry Downer, curator of aquariums and herpetology at the Tulsa Zoo, said video and photos he had seen led him to believe it was a Huntsman spider and is harmless to humans.
"There's pretty definitive evidence it has been misidentified," he said.
Childs said Wednesday night he had destroyed the spider at the urging of a TU administrator because of safety concerns.
Downer said the spider should have been preserved for study, but he was told the body would not be made available.
"It doesn't make any sense to me why it wouldn't be saved," he said.
A TU spokesman said Thursday the university is looking into how and why the spider was destroyed.
The spider was found in a shipment of bananas at Whole Foods. Childs praised the store's employees for their handling of the situation, and said it can happen at any store.
By SHANNON MUCHMORE World Staff Writer
Only 7% of the cases of bites from the Brazilian Wandering Spider require antivenin. Additionally, of 7000 reported bites from the Brazilian wandering spider, only a few deaths have been recorded, less than 1% of those bitten.
Nobody has died from a wandering spider bite in over a decade.
The bananna spider is a tarantula, although other spiders are known to hang out in bananna buin
Anon@~34: "Being young, kombucha-guzzling vegetarians, we could not bring ourselves to kill her, and let her out back. "
There goes the ecosystem.
You crazy kombucha-guzzling hippies!! YOU'VE KILLED US AAAAAAALL!!!
I suppose he irresolutely paranoid could fumigate with carbon dioxide
@ZuZu
Marsupials are mammals. :)
Well, according to this:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090320/ap_on_re_us/deadly_spider
It's either the most deadly spider in the world, or it's actually harmless to humans.
How's that go? red on black friend of jack, red on yellow kill a fellow?
When in doubt, whack it with a shovel.
#8 - I had the exact same thing happen to me. Just happened to notice the Black Widow sitting in amongst the grapes. The grapes had been in the fridge for over 24 hours too, I was amazed the thing was still alive.
Yes, we have no bananas :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESBFd2nCYUk
Oh THANKS ALOT Whole Foods Inc. Now you've got my wife & kids scared to death and demanding that we move back to Iceland. Wonderful. Now I'm gonna have to start worrying about the Icelandic Death Adder again.