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Location: Jalisco, Mexico
This spider bit one of my family members on the neck and on her arm two hours ago. She presents no swelling or symptoms, but I'd still like to know if it's possibly venomous. We're keeping a close eye on her.
Thanks in advance!
Sorry for being late.
It's an orb-weaver, Neoscona sp., probably N. arabesca
All orb-weavers are harmless, so you should be good.
Also, there is no need to mark pictures of spiders as NSFW. I'd prefer that you didn't (I usually have NSFW posts disabled, which is why it took me so long to see this post).
Cool! Yeah, it looks a lot like this male orb-weaver. Thank you so much, I'll let her know.
And sorry about the NSFW, I have a different phobia and would rather not see blown-up pictures of that randomly in my feed.
Pretty sure yours is female.
Might be Neoscona domiciliorum after all. A couple of those Neoscona spp have quite the wide range of overlapping patterns.
Looks like an orb weaver to me. Unless you’re unlucky enough to be allergic to their venom, harmless to humans.
Just as an aside counting eyes and eye layout is pretty helpful in identifying spiders.
This is one of the very few uses I have for AI image searching. It does a decent job at pattern recognition.
It gave the result as a marbled orb weaver, and judging by other images found, that seems reasonable to me. It is not venomous.
I'm just a lay person, so please take my answer with a grain of salt and feel free to use it as a jumping off point for your own research on it.
It gave the result as a marbled orb weaver, and judging by other images found, that seems reasonable to me
Not the worst guess and it got the family right. It's Neoscona sp.
And they are venomous (pretty much all spiders are), but not medically significant.
This is one of the very few uses I have for AI image searching. It does a decent job at pattern recognition.
There is two big problems with this. First, a lot of very different spiders look quite similar. And while there are definitely patterns to be recognised, in comes the 2nd problem. There is a lot of misidentified or mislabeled spider pictures on the internet and I'm not sure how well curated the training data for these models is.
In this specific case it successfully identified it as an orange orb-weaver ... just the wrong one! It's not a big deal in this case, there are no significant difference for a layperson between these spiders.
But I certainly wouldn't trust any "brown recluse" ID from an AI because the internet is absolutely full of pictures of random brown spiders with that label wrongfully attached.
No way in fuck am I trusting an AI to tell me if the spider that just but me is one that will kill me it causes me harm. Asking to die if you do that
Venomous spiders are not an issue in North America, and yes, even Mexico. The ones that are dangerous, aren't, well, really dangerous unless you're a baby or very elderly with health issues.
That's a big bitey one, probably an orb weaver or (more likely) some sort of wolf spider. The later bites, it stings a bit, done. The former, not sure they can pierce human flesh.
And what are you going to do? Rush to the ER? "This spider bit me!!!" Like they're going to know what the fuck it is. They'll inspect the tiny wound, see nothing, send you home with instructions to report back if issues arise. Done.
I'm guessing you don't go outdoors much?
Black widow spiders aren't venomous?
They certainly are and are considered medically significant. But bites are extremely rare and most healthy people can just shrug it off. There have been no confirmed deaths by spider bites in the US for almost 2 decades.
We got black widows, brown recluses, a wandering spider or two, but no, you don't go to the hospital for any of those bites unless you are experiencing secondary effects. Like black widow bites can give you a multi-hour erection that needs treatment. Maybe if you have an allergy, but then bees injure way more people in north America than all spiders combined.
Like black widow bites can give you a multi-hour erection that needs treatment
That's the wandering spider (only found in South America), not the widows.
Latrodectism, the effects of a bite from widows, also includes priapism. I went back to look though because i remember it as a relatively common side effect, but now that I look into it the literature says it's a rare occurrence and almost entirely on kids who get bitten, not adults.
Which may explain why when I was told what to watch out for when I got a potential bite as a kid, that was one of the things.
Peter?
My office...
LOL I was trying really hard not to crack that joke.
Could be a wolf spider, but I'm no expert.