What Spider had the Deadliest Venom?

[beet1e]

I've watched several wildlife series by folks like Steve Irwin, Liz Dalton, David Attenborough. The series "Deadly Australians" dealt with spiders and snakes. As I recall, the most dangerous spider was not the funnelweb but the Red Back. This does not necessarily mean that it is more venomous. Also taken into account was the creature's habitat. The Red Back spider likes to live near people - in the cracks between bricks in your garage for example. I don't know where the funnel web spider lives.

Same thing goes for snakes. The most poisonous snake in the world is the Fierce snake, but it lives in the NT desert (near Ayer's Rock?)  - an area where few people are to be found.

But the most dangerous snake in Australia is the Brown snake. It is the second most poisonous snake in the world, and its habitat is suburbia! In the grass next to your kid's swing, or feeding off mice in the crawl space under your house. I've never been to OZ, but they tell me that when someone gets bitten by a snake over there, the Brown snake is the usual suspect. It's a bad tempered mofo to boot, and is not to be messed with.

[muckmaw]

Remind me not to let me daughter leave the house...

[vorticon]

i dont mind spiders...they aint ever done nothing to me none...and are quite handy in mosquito season...

[Reschke]

Two things....I HATE SPIDERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and I HATE SPIDERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Those little (or big) bastards are sneaky and don't flippin discriminate against human or otherwise. They are quiet and you can't hear the damn things when they are moving...don't throw the tarantula card in here because that just exacerbates the issue that I hate the damn things!

I have been bitten by the little round body house spider and a brown recluse. The brown recluse just pushed my fear over the edge and all this was before I was 13.

The only thing I have for spiders other than the one we southerners call "Grandaddy Long Legs" is huge cans of bug spray and if that doesn't work then gasoline and a match!

[Udie]

worst one's we have here in Texas are the black widows and brown recluse (think they're related to the Oz Funnel spider).  I had a friend who got bit by a brown recluse last summer on the inner thigh.  DUDE!!!! that was some KNARLY!!! stuff!  He could only ware shorts for like 4 months and a big chunk of his flesh rotted away!  about the size of a plumb.  It was really gross.

 What ever bit me sure did leave a very painful bump.

[Bluedog]

Originally posted by beet1e
I've watched several wildlife series by folks like Steve Irwin, Liz Dalton, David Attenborough. The series "Deadly Australians" dealt with spiders and snakes. As I recall, the most dangerous spider was not the funnelweb but the Red Back. This does not necessarily mean that it is more venomous. Also taken into account was the creature's habitat. The Red Back spider likes to live near people - in the cracks between bricks in your garage for example. I don't know where the funnel web spider lives.

Same thing goes for snakes. The most poisonous snake in the world is the Fierce snake, but it lives in the NT desert (near Ayer's Rock?)  - an area where few people are to be found.

But the most dangerous snake in Australia is the Brown snake. It is the second most poisonous snake in the world, and its habitat is suburbia! In the grass next to your kid's swing, or feeding off mice in the crawl space under your house. I've never been to OZ, but they tell me that when someone gets bitten by a snake over there, the Brown snake is the usual suspect. It's a bad tempered mofo to boot, and is not to be messed with.

The Redback(http://www.qmuseum.qld.gov.au/features/spiders/spiders/RedbackSpider.asp) is basically an Aussie version of the Black Widow, and it is everywhere, from the tropical rainforests to the desert, that is why it is more dangerous than the Funnel Web, which only lives in the Blue Mountains, and on the Great Dividing Range.
http://www.amonline.net.au/factsheets/funnelweb.htm

The Brown snake you are talking about would be the Eastern King Brown(http://www.qmuseum.qld.gov.au/features/snakes/snakedetail.asp?TaxName=Pseudechis+australis),or the Common Brown,(http://www.qmuseum.qld.gov.au/features/snakes/snakedetail.asp?TaxName=Pseudonaja+textilis) both nasty buggers, and often mistaken for one another just by way of their names, they dont look all that similar.
See hundreds of them in summer around here, thats why God invented shotguns.

Heres a page that shows the distribution of Australia's dangerous snakes, I'm lucky enough to live in an area that has every damn one of them bar the Copperhead and the Fierce snake.
http://www.usyd.edu.au/anaes/venom/snakebite.html#king

[muckmaw]

I think a snake is the one animal I could shoot and feel no remorse.

[ravells]

Don't the Aussie's called the Red Back a 'Wha'?

As in you're dead before you can say, 'What the f*** was that?'

Back in Malaysia we had some huge bloody spiders. Saw one on our telephone wire when I was about 10. It was black and had luminous green markings and was about 10 inches in diameter.

I threw a few stones at it and then thought the better of it.

Ravs

[beet1e]

Bluedog - great links!

The Brown I saw on TV was the Common Brown. Not even Steve Irwin would mess with it. A family had a pet parrot or similar bird on their porch. The bird was a messy eater, and its birdseed got spilled on the porch and found its way between the floorboards down into the crawl space. That attracted mice, and the mice attracted the snake.

Blue - if you have all those Browns right where you're living, do you keep the appropriate medical treatment in your house in case someone gets bitten?

The Taipan! I remember reading about that - one with machine gun jaws that can bite you a dozen times in a single strike. Do you know of any other snakes with a jaw mechanism like this?

[BGBMAW]

OK...!!!!


So..Any1 here have the Answer to MOST Poisonous Venom from a spider....??


And it does not mean just human ..but killing anything...

Please..  try to keep it simple..


So its either Daddy Long Legs-or Banana Spider?

[Steve]

Well I'll   reiterate.  Some sources have the black widow as the deadliest spider.  It's toxin is said to be 15 times more poisonous than your typical rattlesnake.


Edit:  The whole daddy long legs thing is a myth... derned things don't have poison at all.

[BGBMAW]

thnk u steve...
But this girl was tryn to tell me she just saw it on the Discovery channel..Soem BS about DDL spider being super deadly venom...

knid of strange to hear many contradictions..and this isnt even polotics..lol

[Steve]

Well, what we in North America call Daddy long legs  isn't a spider at all, but a cousin of spiders called:  Harvestmen.  A picture of one is already in this thread.

Daddy-long-legs are often thought to be spiders, while in fact they are only distant cousins. Like spiders they have eight legs, but where a spider has a pair of "fangs," a harvestman has a pair of minute pincer-like claws and no venom

from the link:
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?[url]http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/spider/pholcus1.html[/URL]

However, in Europe the name Daddy long legs applies to a different animal entirely that actually is a spider:  Pholcus phalangioides.

Comments on it's toxicity: Uncertain; not aggressive and probably too small to cause illness in humans.

Can be found at this link:
http://www.usq.edu.au/spider/find/spiders/508.htm


Hope this settles it for you.


Steve

[lasersailor184]

Steve, the Black Widow venom is only deadly to those allergic to it.  But only 1/16 are allergic or something.


Otherwise it's just a venom that makes for a really miserable two days.  Fevers, hallucinations, and the such.



But the cone fish I was talking about was more like a cross between a clam and a hermit crab.  It's a clam in a hermit crab shell.  It's a deep sea animal, So it would surprise me if 1 person is killed by it a year.

[Steve]

lasersailor: WRONG!!!!!!

The venom of a black widow spider is said to be 15 times more poisonous than a rattlesnake.

http://nd.essortment.com/poisonousspider_rlpt.htm


Edit:  To be fair Laser, you are right in  that a healthy adult wouldn't die from a BW bite unless he/she was allergic. I bet this is what you meant.  Small children and even elderly people can die from a BW bite.