Do you like spiders? Yeah…I didn’t think so! Most people don’t like them. Some people are even completely terrified of them, suffering from a disorder known as Arachnophobia, or the “fear of spiders”. I’m guessing that it probably won’t help you like them any more by my telling you that ALL spider are venomous. In addition, ALL spiders have fangs!
As I mentioned above, all spiders are venomous, but obviously with varying degrees of toxicity. Lucky for us, most spider venom can’t harm us, because it is quite weak. Of course, just like anything else, there are always exceptions to the rule. There are some people out there, and you may even know one or two yourself, that are overly hypersensitive to just about any kind of insect bite or sting. These particular people may exhibit a more severe reaction than most other people would.
Most of the spiders out there use their venom to paralyze their prey, just long enough for the spider to eat it. Other spiders have venom strong enough to kill their prey. There are even some spiders out there that have venom strong enough to cause serious nerve damage, extreme pain, or even death in humans. These spiders include the Black & Brown Widows, and the Brown Recluse. There is some debate as to whether or not the Brown Widow is as dangerous as the Black Widow. I’m not sure if they are or not, but one thing is for sure, I don’t want to find out! The bad news is that all 3 of these spiders exist in our state (Georgia). The good news, if you want to call it that, is that out of all of the spider species that we have, these 3 are pretty much the only ones that are really considered dangerous. That’s not too bad, considering that we have about 4,000 species of spiders in the United States.