Wrongly Accused? 3 Spiders May Not Liquify Human Tissue After All

A new study, published this month in the journal Toxicon, suggests that the venom of the Australian white-tailed spider — which has a reputation on the Internet of being powerful enough to kill human tissue — may not be so toxic after all. In fact, there were no signs of necrosis in a man recently bitten by a white-tailed spider, despite the man's fears that he would need drastic treatments, said Dr. Scott Weinstein, a toxinologist at Women's and Children's Hospital in North Adelaide, Australia, who treated the man and wrote the study. Websites that may not be based on credible research claim that white-tailed spider bites are dangerous, for instance, the website DoctorDecides.com says the bites "may cause deep ulcers and skin necrosis." Similarly, hobo spiders and wolf spiders that live in the United States may also have been wrongly assumed to cause necrosis, recent studies show. Read More http://ift.tt/1jqsJLk