Something to make the most reckless tremble. The manager of an organic store discovered a 6-inch banana spider in a parcel of bananas. The animal can kill a man with a single bite.
The story will make more than one shudder. In Sallanches, Haute-Savoie, the manager of an organic store discovered a stowaway in a parcel of bananas from the Dominican Republic: a banana spider. It is the most poisonous spider in the world.
Up to 15 cm in diameter
A pleasant name for an animal that is much less so: the banana spider (Phoneutria nigriventer) has a body of one to four centimeters, and legs that can measure up to 15 cm. It is a specimen of this species that the manager discovered when he opened his shipment of bananas, says The Dauphiné Libéré.
Male specimen of the banana spider (MARY EVANS / SIPA)
Three times more toxic than the Black Widow
When the beast leaps out of the package, the man does not panic. He captures the spider, and places it in a vivarium. It is on the Internet that he learns more about the animal which is invited in its bananas. The banana spider is extremely poisonous. Its bite is three times more poisonous than that of the Black Widow and thirty times more than that of the rattlesnake. The neurotoxins it injects into the blood can kill a man weighing 80 kilos… and also cause a painful erection.
The manager then alerts the firefighters. It is Edouard Senger, head veterinarian of the main rescue center of Sallanches who is responsible for evacuating the unwanted.
May arachnophobes be reassured: the animal lives mainly in Brazil, French Guiana, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. But there are more impressive precedents in the UK. A family had to evacuate their home, invaded by banana spiders. Several eggs had been laid in a diet purchased at the local supermarket. In 2005 a young Cornish woman was bitten by a banana spider. The animal had hidden in a bunch of bananas bought at the supermarket… and was never found.
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-1664960453.jpg "Arachnophobia: “One of the keys to countering fear is knowledge”")
