Thursday, July 12, 2007

Big Favour for the Arachnophobe

Those spider bites? Maybe they're bed bug bites. I don't know. And you know why I don't know?

Because while I have been able to find numerous pictures of bed bug bites on the internet for reference, I can't find any pictures of spider bites. Not because they're aren't any. Actually, I don't know if there are any, because the two times I have clicked on a page after searching "spider bites" I have come face to face with large pictures of large spiders with large eyes, large teeth and lots of hair.

Even typing that is making me feel nauseous.

So if someone's bored and looking for something to do, maybe you could find some information about spider bites - bites from regular old Ontario spiders, not brown recluses or crazy hairy tropical giant-eyed spiders - and maybe a couple of pictures of spider bites themselves? And send them to me without pictures of the spiders that caused them?

That would be very nice and much appreciated.

I have to stop typing the word spider now.

4 comments:

Eric Espig said...

I tried but quickly realized that the Brown Recluse Spider bites dominate the web. I, an arachniphile, coudn't even weed through them, yikes.
Interestingly, and equally horrifically as the above, meth sores are also known as "spider bites" (that is much nicer than saying "meth sore", and I have to stop looking at pictures now.

Asteroidea Press said...

Huh, I hadn't even thought to add meth to the list of things that might be biting me.

David Scrimshaw said...

I've been doing the web searching. It seems like spiders are an unlikely source of your sores.

There are lots of horrific pictures of necrotic wounds attributed to various spiders. I'm assuming you have not got such a wound or you'd have been to the hospital. In any case, it seems that attribution of these wounds to spiders is controversial.

This paper with two non-hairy spider pictures towards the bottom says:
The criterion standard for spider-bite diagnosis should be a spider caught in the act of biting or otherwise reliably associated with a lesion (and properly identified by a qualified arachnologist). Unless this standard is met, a working diagnosis of spider bite should not be considered. Proper identification is critical; in our experience, the general public and the medical community identify many harmless spiders as brown recluse or, more recently, hobo spiders.

Healthy Ontario has tips on reducing risk of spider bites (with no spider photos) and a link to how to ask for medical advice.

On another page they say that "MRSA/Staph is often misdiagnosed as spider bites".

Tallman Scientific has some decent bedbug bite photos.

But Bite Remedy is what you are looking for. Some small gross pictures, but no spiders.

Asteroidea Press said...

Well, I'm definitely sure I wasn't bitten by a brown recluse spider.

But I'm not convinced it's bedbugs either. In some ways, the bites fit the pattern, but in other ways not.

And I couldn't find any under my bed or around my mattress last night either. And no bites since I changed my sheets.

We'll see. Thank you tons for the info! And for the heads up on the spider pictures. I didn't look at that one.