World's deadliest spider found in Tulsa store

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

TULSA, Okla. – One of the most deadly spiders in the world has been found in the produce section of a Tulsa grocery store. An employee of Whole Foods Market found the Brazilian Wandering Spider Sunday in bananas from Honduras and managed to catch it in a container.
The spider was given to University of Tulsa Animal Facilities director Terry Childs who said this type of spider kills more people than any other.
Childs said a bite will kill a person in about 25 minutes and while there is an antidote he doesn't know of any in the Tulsa area.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090320/ap_on_re_us/deadly_spider


I think I'll start checking my produce better.

David

[BlooInBloo]

1. What are the chances that there's just *1* of a critter about anywhere?

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

4. Let's hope they caught the female.

[ensho]

48. that's what I always say , if you see one there is bound to be more

special to this spider, the produce comes in from that area all the time.

[cboy4]

2. Every time I pick through the bananas, I'm just wating for some

creepy ass spider to jump on my hand.

[NYC_SKP]

3. What's that? You want spider pics? mmmkay.

How about a YouTube? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMiPJD0yrKM

Or a wikipedia entry? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_wandering_spider

EEEWWWWWWW!!! Spy-durs!!!!

[wroberts189]

6. amazing...creepy and deadly .. and suddenly you got 25 minutes to live

And all you wanted was some bananas.

[Crunchy Frog]

7. .

"Although rare, there have been instances of the spider depositing its nearly microscopic eggs in the ears and other orafices of human beings."

:scared:

[NYC_SKP]

16. Lay eggs in your ear? Ewwwwww! But then the little spider babies can eat.

And that's kinda nice!

[surrealAmerican]

43. Yuk!

There's an image I did not want to have in my head.

[Maru Kitteh]

45. "other" orifices?

Dude.

[Jennicut]

9. I HATE you! I have serious arachnophobia.

well, it used to be worse. I am a bit better now. A bit. I am so glad I live in CT but those things can travel and get into packages. We are safe no where!

[NYC_SKP]

17. LOL....You must be getting a little better or you wouldn't have opened this can...

...of creepy crawlies.

Here, have a puppy!!!

[Dorian Gray]

25. Awww!

PUPPIES!

Thank you for that. The spider pix were freaking me out a little! :)

[Jennicut]

38. Thank you. So much better.

:)

[Kalyke]

53. Awwww... I want that one that is asleep in the front.

PUPPY BREATH CURES ALL THAT AILS YOU!!!

[NYC_SKP]

54. OK, I want the one on top, looking out for the sleepy ones... nt

[DRoseDARs]

34. .

[wroberts189]

5. cool video at link with pics... employee looked it up on the net.

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=12576231&ch=4226726&src=news

[Critters2]

15. Holy crap!! That's gonna be one big spider! nt

[lonestarnot]

44. ackety!

creepy.

[Initech]

8. Why am I suddenly reminded of the movie "Arachnophobia"?

[Common Sense Party]

10. But the real question is: did somebody shoot the spider with their

concealed carry handgun?

[LeftyMom]

13. !

:rofl:

[Common Sense Party]

20. I'm glad someone got it. n/t

[TreasonousBastard]

11. Whole Foods? Organic spiders in...

organic bananas?

(Who says insecticides are always bad?)

[cboy4]

23. Spiders and other tropical creatures come over in non-organic

food as well.

I've read of numerous accounts.

[leftchick]

32. they sell conventional as well

at least in my area.

[lilgayghostgirl]

12. Wow, that's almost more serious than THIS spider problem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc

[moriah]

18. My coworkers all loved that one....

But the Evil Empire (Wal-Mart)'s bananas should be safe to touch.... they acquire their bananas green and artificially ripen them in gas-filled chambers. I think any hitchhikers would die from the gas.

(Yes, I know that's how they do it, I've had to fix the computers that monitor the gas concentrations in the banana rooms.)

[Duer 157099]

14. A Brazilian Wandering Spider in Honduran bananas in Oklahoma

Wandering is right!

[Arugula Latte]

19. Me no likee the spiders

:scared:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

21. Now I like spiders; but this is just too gross....

From Wikipedia: "Although rare, there have been instances of the spider depositing its nearly microscopic eggs in the ears and other orifices of human beings." :hide:

[NaturalHigh]

22. Actually, the Tulsa Zoo is now disputing that this was a Brazilian Wandering Spider.

The professor from TU, though, still says that it was. I hope the zoo is right because I absolutely hate spiders to begin with. Ironically, I'm not wild about birds, which eat spiders, either.

What to do? :shrug:

[Serenitynow]

24. Will the Spider be deported?

Right-wing groups push for deportation.

[tangent90]

30. Heard on the news this morning they 'euthanized' it.

Probably with the sole of somebody's shoe...
:shrug:

[QueenOfCalifornia]

31. I have it on good authority

the spider is on life support and the Christian Taliban is urging their senators to fly in over night to keep it on life support.

Spiders have rights too damn it. (please don't let this become a PETA thread :scared: )

[SoCalDem]

26. Lou Dobbs will be ALL OVER this.. damned "illeeeeegals"..

:rofl:

spider came here to take away jobs from American spiders, hatch eggs here & open a brazilian waxing salon...8 hairy legs at a time..

[Lil Missy]

27. Well crap!

:scared:

[carlyhippy]

28. That is how those stupid tarantulas ended up here in the first place in banana crates

those are the creepiest critters ever

[depakid]

29. Nasty little beasts

Brazilian Wandering Spiders: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_wandering_spider">Phoneutria species



are about about on par with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_funnel-web_spider">Atrax and http://www.usq.edu.au/spider/find/spiders/207.htm">Hadronyche (Australian funnel webs):

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2008/12/29/spider_narrowweb__300x421,0.jpg

----------

Curiously, severe envenomation is rare with Phoneutria- and Brazilians don't treat with anti-venom as a matter of course.

http://www.scielo.br/pdf/rimtsp/v42n1/v42n1a03.pdf

[rainbow4321]

33. Oklahoma has some of the nastiest spiders

On their own, they sure as hell don't need any help from Brazil. My sis lives in a Tulsa suburb and between the snakes, spiders, and mice she comes across it's amazing they have not been all eaten alive in their sleep.

[elizfeelinggreat]

35. Not so deadly? Chance Tulsa spider misidentified

That's the new headline this morning!

Childs was also wrong about how deadly it would have been. Excellent fear mongering going on there!

[depakid]

36. Not to knock the fraidy cats (or fundies?) at the university of Tulsa but....

Childs said Wednesday night that he had destroyed the spider at the urging of a university administrator because of safety concerns.

Downer said the spider should have been preserved for study, but he was told that the body would not be made available.

"It doesn't make any sense to me why it wouldn't be saved," he said.

A school spokesman said Thursday that the university is looking into how and why the spider was destroyed.

Richard Grantham, director of the plant disease and insect diagnostics lab at Oklahoma State University, also said the spider should not have been destroyed.

After looking at pictures of the spider, he said he does not believe it to be a Brazilian wandering spider, but he said it should have been preserved anyway.

"We preserve it," Grantham said. "We don't destroy it."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jLmKtFU_MaxXfHnkoC5zwE2lEQagD971O03O0

[tigereye]

42. no doubt the media trucks are converging there as we speak...

[depakid]

46. Could be- it's terrafying

Imagine the reactions from cool faculty at the university now that the media's gotten hold of this:


Stimpy, you idiot....

I guess it might still be interesting to do a traceback.

[gratuitous]

37. OT: I hear Barbara Bush is recovering nicely from surgery

I have no idea why that occurred to me on a thread about the world's deadliest spider. Truly I don't.

[derby378]

39. Well, since Tulsa now has the spider...

...one of their hospitals should be able to use the venom to manufacture some doses of antivenin at this point.

[rainbow4321]

55. Seems the spider was destroyed

Talked to my sis in Tulsa tonight...

Apparently a professor at OU who must specialize in spiders and similiar creastures saw a pic of the spider and said it was NOT the deadly Brazil spider..he called people in Tulsa and asked to see the real thing and was told...too late, we've killed it and threw it away. Ya think they would have kept it around to have it examined to see if it was the Brazil spider or, yeah, get some sort of antidote concocted.


On edit...the only people who are saying it was NOT the deadly spider only saw pictures of it..they had not seen it up close, etc...

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20090320_298_0_Tulsan720441

Terry Childs, director of animal facilities at TU, put the spider in a freezer set to -80 degrees Fahrenheit, where it quickly froze to death. The body was then destroyed in a manner the university has not yet been able to determine, TU spokesman David Hamby said. “There are no pieces of it left,” he said. “It was completely destroyed.”

When Childs picked up the spider Sunday from the Whole Foods store where it was found in a shipment of bananas, he said he recognized it immediately as a Brazilian wandering spider, an aggressive and highly venomous spider.

Barry Downer, the curator of aquariums and herpetology at the Tulsa Zoo said Wednesday night that, judging from pictures of the specimen, he thought it had been misidentified and was actually a Huntsman spider, which is harmless to humans.

Hamby said Friday it is against TU procedures to accept any kind of animal from the public.

[Are_grits_groceries]

40. Here's another nasty to add to the thread:

This half inch long sea spider is an amazing form of life. It has no lungs or gills, transmitting gasses directly through it's slender exoskeleton. The digestive tract extends down it's legs and is clearly visible here as snaky, colored tubes inside the transparent exoskeleton.

This specimen is on fire coral in 30 feet of water in Grand Cayman.

Sea Spiders are found in all oceans and at least one species can get up to 2 feet long in some deep sea areas.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/courtneyplatt/2345436749/

Creepy even without hairy legs......

[gauguin57]

41. Eek!

[flvegan]

47. Ye gods but I HATE spiders.

[rucky]

49. Every organic grocery should have some live bats on-hand

And release them in the store every night to prevent this sort of thing.

[maxrandb]

50. Boris

Look, he's crawling up my wall
Black and hairy, very small
Now he's up above my head
Hanging by a little thread

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

Now he's dropped on to the floor
Heading for the bedroom door
Maybe he's as scared as me
Where's he gone now, I can't see

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly

There he is wrapped in a ball
Doesn't seem to move at all
Perhaps he's dead, I'll just make sure
Pick this book up off the floor

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly

He's come to a sticky end
Don't think he will ever mend
Never more will he crawl 'round
He's embedded in the ground

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

[Echo In Light]

51. Ha...killer bass line!

[Crabby Appleton]

52. Boris

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWpz2OYf1QU