Toxic spider crawls out of a bunch of bananas
It has all the trappings of the opening scene of a B-movie. Employees in the ‘quiet’ town of Bolsward, Friesland were working at the supermarket, doing their thing. All of a sudden, an employee was in the fruit section and saw something big and brown crawl out of the bananas to say Bom Dia! to the world.
It was big and is apparently high venimous. It was a Brazilian wandering spider (phoneutria nigriventer) that hitched a ride on a bunch of bananas from Costa Rica to the Netherlands.
If you get bitten by the Brazilian, it does things only its maker could have come up with after a bender of mojitos and samba. Here’s what Wikipedia tells us:
Aside from causing intense pain, the venom of the spider can also cause priapism in humans. Erections resulting from the bite are uncomfortable, can last for many hours and can lead to impotence. A component of the venom (Tx2-6) is being studied for use in erectile dysfunction treatments.
In true sober Dutch style, an employee caught the spider, put it in a jar, and eventually drowned it and threw it in the bin.
(Link: hartvannederland.nl, Photo of Ctenus exlineae (F Ctenidae) by Marshal Hedin, some rights reserved)
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