Brown Recluse Spider in Action

[mnpd]

<p>I guess we've all heard of the notorious Brown Recluse Spider. If you haven't, don't worry... the less you know about it , the better you'll sleep at night. The spiders are easily identified by the violin or 'fiddle" shaped marking on the thorax. Some 20 years ago I managed to capture a nice big specimen that had a leg span of about 1.25", built a terrarium for it, and photographed its activities over a period of months. That involved feeding the thing and noting its reactions to living prey (insects).<br /><br />The camera I used was an old Nikormat FTN (which I still have), Plus-X Pan B&W film, and a Vivitar Macro 1:1 lens using existing light. I developed the film after my "experiment", but just now got around to printing those negatives (I had to retire first!). I have many negatives of the spider, and I'll upload 3 images here. Photographing a sometimes moving 3D scene with a zero depth-of-field macro lens is challenging... but I think I managed fairly well.<br /><br />The spider spun no web, but would sit motionless, backed into the corner of the terrarium with its legs cocked forward of its body, like a sprinter ready to come off the line, or a slingshot ready to snap. When an insect was introduced, the spider would move toward it's prey, but stop short of attacking. Once in "feeler' range, the spider would slowly extend one long front leg, gauge its meal in some fashion known only to the spider, then finally move in and bite the insect. I never saw an insect run off after being bitten; it would expire then and there. The spider would then feed before moving back into its corner in its customary 'locked and loaded" position. After a while, the floor of the terrarium was littered with the carcasses of insects.<br /><br />All Brown Recluse spiders I have seen in nature have very small abdomens relative to the rest of their body. They might be the Greyhounds of the arachnid world since only their feet touch the ground when they move. This was the appearance of my spider, until months of feeding went by. Apparently, I grossly overfed my spider because it abdomen grew to enormous size which you can see in the images. The spider's belly actually dragged the ground when it moved, which slowed it down considerably. But, the thing was still able to feed.<br /><br />The affair with the spider ended when I introduced a common cricket to the terrarium. The weather was cold, and I was having trouble finding insects... hence the cricket I found in the basement. Well, long story short, the cricket ate the spider instead. Cricket 1, Spider 0. Maybe the cricket was badder than the spider, or maybe the cricket has an immunity to the spider's venom. I dunno! Entomology ain't my thang.<br /><br />Anyway, maybe you'll like these photos; maybe you'll curse me for posting them. I was a crime scene investigator with the Nashville Metropolitan Police in those days, so I thought little of photographing morbid things... I shot 20-25 rolls a week of carnage in the first place. The first photo is the "skinny" spider as it initially appeared in the beginning, the second image is one of the spider feeding, and the final image shows "fat" overfed spider with the enormous gut. I'm not used to posting images here, so I may have to make separate posts to include all the images.</p><div></div>

[mnpd]

<p>Feeding Spider</p><div></div>

[mnpd]

<p>Fat Spider</p><div></div>

[jay_chadney]

<p>That is one very obese brown recluse!</p>

[mnpd]

<p>That he is! LOL In retrospect I probably didn't need to feed him but once a month... if that. Odd spiders in that they don't seem to spin a web. They are hunters, not trappers, and take their prey by stalking and ambush. A house can be infested with 'em and the owner never see one, as the name implies. Two things signal their presence... (1) getting trapped and discovered by the homeowner in the bathtub, and (2) the odd discovery of numbers of dead insects in secluded places around the house.</p>

[mnpd]

<p>Another thing about the spider is that it had only 7 legs at time of capture. By the time is was too late for Jenny Craig, it had apparently re-grown the missing leg. </p>

[michaelging]

<p>As a person who has had several friends bitten by this spider (not this spider exactly) and have witnessed what a bite from this spider can do , this is as close as I ever want to be to one. They have a nasty bite that causes blood posioning, and takes weeks to heal.</p>

[mnpd]

<p>I heard that, Michael! I've known quite a few people to be bitten myself. As I understand it, the Recluse's poison is a necrotoxin rather than the expected neurotoxin, as in the Black Widow. The Recluse's venom causes tissue death. I've seen wounds that left a small scar, while I've seen others that left an egg sized crater in the body. The Brown Recluse is a bad boy. Worse, it co-habitats with humans, managing to do so because its presence is virtually undetectable.</p>

[BernardMiller]

<p>I lived in a house in Oxford, Mississippi, for a year, co-habiting with a whole damned family of these spiders! And, unlike Thomas' well-behaved brown recluses, mine were highly detectable indeed. I killed at least 12 of them over the course of the year--I finally had to present some of the carcasses to my landlord, who had poo-poohed the idea that the house was infested with them.</p>

<p>The first time I became aware of my fellow lodgers was when I was moving in. It was summer and quite hot, and after hauling a little of my heavier furniture up, I was lying on the bed of the fold-out sofa watching TV shirtless when a big-ass spider ran right across my bare chest. I shot directly out of bed and frantically turned on the light--but the initial freakout wasn't nearly as bad as when I discovered exactly <em>which</em> kind of spider had just gone streaking across my torso.</p>

<p>I got evicted from my bed once that year over the spiders. A sportswriter friend of mine came up to cover an Ole Miss game, and crashed at my place. I had incautiously told him about the resident arachnids. I compounded my mistake by mentioning that I had never seen any spiders in the bedroom, which was in the lowest part of the split-level house.</p>

<p>He then commandeered my own bed, and made me sleep on the sofa, insisting, "I'm not gonna sleep upstairs with a bunch of g--d--- deadly-ass spiders!"</p>

<p>That is indeed one fat, nasty <em>Loxosceles reclusa</em> !</p>

[mnpd]

<p>That's some story, Bernard!<br /><br />I was moving stuff around in the shed one day and spotted this big 'un scurrying after I disturbed his cover. I went in the shed ready for spiders, and hit the recluse with a blast of insecticide. The spider then wen to the end of a wooden plank where the grain was exposed, and parked itself sideways into the most impossibly small crevice; four legs in front of the body, and four legs to the rear. As big as the spider was, it was invisible once it settled. The insecticide of course did its job.<br /><br />These little monsters come out at night when the lights go off. I have found that the surest sign of an infestation is finding one trapped in the bathtub after the sun comes up. If you have one, you have a thousand.<br /><br />My sister lives in an old turn-of-the-century farmhouse. She never saw brown recluse spiders in her home. Yet, during a renovation of a bedroom the interior walls were stripped off, and brown recluse spiders fell out in clumps!<br /><br />I live in Tennessee which is prime Recluse country. Infestations are almost impossible to get rid of because the damn things stay hidden so deep. I've known people to erect plastic tents over their houses and fog the entire premises in an effort to get rid of the things. A few months ago my next door neighbor was out in the area doing yardsales... an activity that allows buyers to import the spiders into their homes via used furniture and other things. A woman at the yard sale saw a spider crawling on my friend, foolishly swatted at it, and caused the spider to run into my neighbor's ear!<br /><br />The neighbor went home, and was contemplating a trip to the emergency room when the spider crawled out on its own... you guess it, it was a brown recluse! It never bit, something my neighbor is eternally grateful for. It hate to think of the damage caused by a bite so deep inside the body to begin with.</p>

[Mike Howard]

<p>One of the worst things about these spiders is fogging/fumigating rarely work with them, since they do not clean themselves like most insects/other spiders. To kill them, you pretty much need to get a direct blast at them, or wack em with a shoe. They also have incredibly long lifespans. When we first moved to Alabama 4 years ago, we freaked out everytime we saw a brown spider. Fortunately, we only had brown wolf spiders. If you have brown wolfs, don't kill them. They are one of the very few predators of brown recluses, so the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned.</p>

[les_barstow]

<p>Thanks for what I hope to be my only encounter with these bad boys. And yes, that last shot is definitely of an obese spider!<br>

I try to keep a healthy stock of Wolf Spiders in my house to deal with Widows and the theoretically non-resident Recluses in the Colorado mountains. A single oggle of a Widow in the woodpile of my old apartment was enough for me, thanks; for photographs, I'll stick to Tarantulas and other less harmful beasties.</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>As a child, one of my grade school class got bit on the face by one and it left a huge crater. Often bites come from putting a hand around to the unseen back of furniture or such.<br>

Ugggh...</p>

[tholte]

<p>One of the few good things about living in a high tax state like Wisconsin is that the cold winters help keep out a lot of nasty insects. If climate change allows these rascals to move this far north, I'm moving to Alaska. I would rather wrestle with Grizzly Bears and wolves than look at spiders. </p>

[mnpd]

<p>That "behind the furniture" reminds of many years ago when I visited the Shiloh battlefield. I was at one of the burial trenches absentmindedly gripping the ends of the metal historical marker plaque as I read it.</p>

<p>After reading the plaque, I walked over the trench, stuck a flag in the soil, turned and walked back in the direction of the car. From the return angle I could see the <em>back</em> of the marker I had just been gripping. Right at the edge where my right fingers had been wrapped around behind the marker, was the biggest Black Widow spider I think I've ever seen! I had to have my hand right on it or next to it, and why it didn't bite me I'll never know.</p>

<p>Ever the photographer, I took a shot of the spider before sending it on to Arachnid Valhalla. Don't want to get too far off my own topic, but my sister was bitten twice by a Black Widow when she was 12 years old, and ended up just this side of death after several weeks in the hospital. I remember her screaming in agony.</p>

<p>The area I live in Tennessee is lousy with both kinds of spiders. Bites, especially by the Recluse are all too common.</p>

[BernardMiller]

<p>There are some really gruesome images of the damage caused (to fingers) by brown recluse bites on <a href="http://ogrishforum.com/showthread.php?t=184175">OgrishForum.com</a> . You'll have to sign up for the forum to see them, sadly. There are many other, erm, disturbing images at that site as well, I am afraid, so browse with caution!</p>

[tomwatt]

<p>My ex-wife was bitten on the stomach by a brown recluse many years ago... had to rush her to the hospital, she was in intensive care, and hooked up to IVs for a couple of days. In the end, a large crater in the middle of her stomach was the result, as all the tissue there died. First sign of the bite was a bruise that continued to spread. Yes, these are nasty spiders. I have also read that the common brown house spider is immune to the brown recluse venom and eats them (these are the little spiders that sit in their cobweb things and bounce the web feeling for their prey).<br>

Thanks for the pics, although they are a little stomach-turning, given how much I dislike these spiders.<br>

When my daughter was young, I showed her how to whack spiders with a rubber mallet, since she was afraid of them so much. It's not a bad solution... rubber mallet. WHACK!</p>

[mnpd]

<p>Sorry for your wife's bad experience with the spider, Thomas. I've seen the "bruise" pattern too that is associated with the bites. It seems that people's reactions are all over the place when it comes to being bitten. Some bites are severe; others less severe. Some bites cause a systemic reaction while with other bites the reaction is localized to the area of the bite. Maybe the reactions depend on how much venom is injected, how the bite victim reacts... or a combination of the two.</p>

<p>I remember this old fellow who put on his hat on day. There was a Brown Recluse in the hat band, and he got bitten on the forehead. He was 94 years old and didn't have any systemic reactions. His reaction was localized, but it was still a bad bite.</p>

<p>Then I ran into this construction worker who was back at the hospital for a followup. Months earlier he had been bitten on the inside of his right calf while working in an old house. He showed me a surgical incision that ran from his ankle to above his knee. I forget the purpose of the surgery, but do remember the guy saying that he had not worked since being bit.</p>

<p>I've also heard folks say that there is pain when the spider bites, while others say that the bite is painless. I wonder too if there isn't some degree of misdiagnosis when it comes to the spider.</p>

<p>What I do know is that I live in prime BR country. I ain't been bitten yet, and hope that I never am.</p>

[mnpd]

<p>Sorry for your wife's bad experience with the spider, Thomas. I've seen the "bruise" pattern too that is associated with the bites. It seems that people's reactions are all over the place when it comes to being bitten. Some bites are severe; others less severe. Some bites cause a systemic reaction while with other bites the reaction is localized to the area of the bite. Maybe the reactions depend on how much venom is injected, how the bite victim reacts... or a combination of the two.</p>

<p>I remember this old fellow who put on his hat on day. There was a Brown Recluse in the hat band, and he got bitten on the forehead. He was 94 years old and didn't have any systemic reactions. His reaction was localized, but it was still a bad bite.</p>

<p>Then I ran into this construction worker who was back at the hospital for a followup. Months earlier he had been bitten on the inside of his right calf while working in an old house. He showed me a surgical incision that ran from his ankle to above his knee. I forget the purpose of the surgery, but do remember the guy saying that he had not worked since being bit.</p>

<p>I've also heard folks say that there is pain when the spider bites, while others say that the bite is painless. I wonder too if there isn't some degree of misdiagnosis when it comes to the spider.</p>

<p>What I do know is that I live in prime BR country. I ain't been bitten yet, and hope that I never am.</p>

[mt4x4]

<p>One nice thing about living in an area that gets cold...not so many species of nasties!</p>