Are there any venomous spiders in Philly..a black one just crawled into my baby brother's hair and immediately he began to cry. What should I do..I'm not sure if he was bitten or not. Will he be OK?

Answer 1

There are many black Spiders in the U.S., and only one called the black widow spider. The black widows are very dangerous, but if your brother stopped crying after the normal length of time for skinned knees and the like, then your brother probably got bitten by a "parson spider" (which is a species of spider that often hangs out where it will get noticed, does not make a web, wanders around looking for some bug to eat, etc.), or something else that can't cause big problems. If it was a black widow that bit him, you would know by now that you had to take him to the emergency ward because he was obviously very sick.

Black widow spider venom goes throughout the body very rapidly, and it causes pain at the bite site very quickly. So I think your brother would have had a very big reaction right away if he had been bitten by a black widow. If it were a serious bite you would know from your brother's reaction that it was no normal thing, and you would be going to the emergency room no matter what you might guess to be the cause.

Just for future information, if somebody does get bitten by a spider and starts acting sick enough to go to the emergency room, it is very much easier for the doctors to be sure of what caused the medical emergency if you can bring the spider with you. The best way is to catch it by popping a drinking glass over it, sliding a card under it, flipping it over, and putting a real lid in place of the card. If you can't catch it alive but you have the body and it hasn't been smashed beyond recognition, then it can help the staff know what did the biting. If a brown recluse bit somebody and the doctors tried to treat it with black widow antivenom, that would not work.

I lived in Philadelphia for five years and I never saw a black widow there. I think they are pretty rare around that part of the country. Also, black widows normally never come into a human house. They like the overturned empty box that has been sitting for a long time in the back yard. And black widow spiders ordinarily would not climb into a lighted space from somewhere that was darker (under the bed, for instance) and quieter. They like to make their webs close to the ground and in a semi-enclosed space. There is one in an old automobile wheel in my yard. It lives in the space between the iron hub and the ground, not out in the open. There are some spiders in the same Family that live in my house. They are smaller and not the shiny black color of a black widow. They always build webs in spaces between the bottom shelf of something and the floor. They never build in the upper corners of the room. There are some others in that family that prefer to get into the spaces between windows and storm windows. None of those types of spiders would be at all likely to get into your brother's hair -- unless he was sticking his head under the bookcase or the chest of drawers.