Oh jeez- I’ve handled so many so often that I have developed an allergy to some tarantulas. In Ecuador alone, I’ve handled hundreds of individuals. In addition, in the lab I hold the same individuals over and over again- hundreds of times- so I guess if I had to say how many times have I had a spider in my hand? Idk- 2000? ha. No clue. but a lot more than most people. I man-handled that poor little guy- I try not to do that often but like I said he was escaping!
So, of the estimated 2000 times buggirl has handled spiders with her bare hands (ranging from completely harmless species to black widows), she has been bitten exactly twice, each time when she was trying to hastily impose her will on an agitated captive. So it’s a 0.1% risk of her being bitten in any given spider-handling scenario.
Good to know.
Side note: In looking through some black-widow-handling YouTube videos, the comments were predictably YouTube-ian. But there also was this exchange, which made me laugh:
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1NgC2sT.
Tags: insects, spiders, black widows, that are not really insects, but anonsally def. should not follow any of the links in this post, buggirl.
