References Binford GJ, Cordes MHJ, Wells MA (2005). Sphingomyelinase D from venoms of Loxosceles spiders: evolutionary insights from cDNA sequences and gene structure. Toxicon 45: 547-560. doi: 10.1016/j.toxicon.2004.11.011 Cordes MHJ, Binford GJ (2006). Lateral gene transfer of a dermonecrotic toxin between spiders and bacteria. Bioinformatics 22(3): 264-268. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/bti811 Dias-Lopes C, Paiva AL, Guerra-Duarte C, Molina F, Felicori L (2018). Venomous Arachnid Diagnostic Assays, Lessons from Past Attempts. Toxins 10(9), 365. doi: 10.3390/toxins10090365 Dominguez T (2004). It’s Not a Spider Bite, It’s Community-Acquired Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The Journal of the American Board of Family Practice 17(3): 220-226. Dunbar JP, Sulpice R, Dugon MM (2019). The kiss of (cell) death: can venom-induced immune response contribute to dermal necrosis following arthropod envenomations? Clinical Toxicology, doi: 10.1080/15563650.2019.1578367 Duperre N, Harms D, Crespo-Perez V, Tapia E (2024). Two new species of the spider genus Loxosceles (Araneae, Sicariidae) from the Ecuadorian Andes. Evolutionary Systematics 8:1-14. doi: 10.3897/evolsyst.8.107213 Fischer ML, Cokl A, Ramires EN, Marques-da-Silva E, Delay C, Fontana JD, Donatti L, Schneider VF, de Assis Marques F (2009). Sound is involved in multimodal communication of Loxosceles intermedia Mello-Leitao, 1934 (Araneae: Sicariidae). Behavioural Processes 82: 236-243. Forrester JA, Weiser TG, & Forrester JD (2018). An update on fatalities due to venomous and nonvenomous animals in the United States (2008-2015). Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, 29(1), 36-44. Fouch B, Coventry S (2007). A Case of Fatal Disseminated Bartonella henselae Infection (Cat-Scratch Disease) With Encephalitis. Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine 131(10): 1591-1594. Frithsen IL, Vetter RS, Stocks IC (2007). Reports of Envenomation by Brown Recluse Spiders Exceed Verified Specimens of Loxosceles Spiders in South Carolina. J Am Board Fam Med 20(5): 483-488. doi: 10.3122/jabfm.2007.05.060221 Gomez HF, Krywko DM, Stoecker WV (2002). A New Assay for the Detection of Loxosceles Species (Brown Recluse) Spider Venom. Annals of Emergency Medicine 39(5): 469-474. doi: 10.1067/mem.2002.122914 Greene A, Breisch NL, Boardman T, Pagac BB, Kunickis E, Howes RK, Brown PV (2009). The Mediterranean Recluse Spider, Loxosceles rufescens (Dufour): An Abundant but Cryptic Inhabitant of Deep Infrastructure in the Washington, D.C. Area (Arachnida: Araneae: Sicariidae). American Entomologist, 55(3): 158-169 Hite JM (1966). The biology of the brown recluse spider, Loxosceles reclusa Gertsch and Mulaik. Ph.D. dissertation. Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas. Holfeld A, & Lochner C (2014). Safety of hair dryers. Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschutz und Arbeitsmedizin. Jensenius Jr JS (2015). A detailed analysis of lightning deaths in the United States from 2006 through 2014. Executive Summary. United States: National Weather Service. Krywko DM, Gomez HF (2002). Detection of Loxosceles Species Venom in Dermal Lesions: A Comparison of 4 Venom Recovery Methods. Annals of Emergency Medicine 39(5): 475-480. doi: 10.1067/mem.2002.123551 Madrigal GC, Ercolani RL, Wenzl JE (1972). Toxicity from a Bite of the Brown Spider (Loxosceles reclusus). Clinical Pediatrics 11(11): 641-644. Miller MJ, Gomez HF, Snider RJ, Stephens EL, Czop RM, Warren JS (2000). Detection of Loxosceles Venom in Lesional Hair Shafts and Skin: Application of a Specific Immunoassay to Identify Dermonecrotic Arachnidism. American Journal of Emergency Medicine 18(5): 626-628. doi: 10.1053/ajem.2000.9272 Moran, GJ, Krishnadasan A, Gorwitz RJ, Fosheim GE, McDougal LK, Carey RB, & Talan DA (2006). Methicillin-resistant S. aureus infections among patients in the emergency department. New England Journal of Medicine, 355(7): 666-674. Patronek GJ, Sacks JJ., Delise KM, Cleary DV, & Marder AR (2013). Co-occurrence of potentially preventable factors in 256 dog bite-related fatalities in the United States (2000-2009). Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 243(12): 1726-1736. Rader RK, Stoecker WV, Malters JM, Marr MT, Dyer JA (2012). Seasonality of brown recluse populations is reflected by numbers of brown recluse envenomations. Toxicon 60(1): 1-3. doi: 10.1016/j.toxicon.2012.03.012 Rees R, Campbell D, Rieger E, King LE (1987). The Diagnosis and Treatment of Brown Recluse Spider Bites. Annals of Emergency Medicine 16(9): 945-949. Rosen JL, Dumitru JK, Langley EW, Olivier CAM (2012). Emergency Department Death From Systemic Loxoscelism. Annals of Emergency Medicine 60(4): 439-441. doi: 10.1016/j.annemergmed.2011.12.011 Sams HH, Hearth SB, Long LL, Wilson DC, Sanders DH, King LE (2001). Nineteen documented cases of Loxosceles reclusa envenomation. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 44(4): 603-608. doi: 10.1067/mjd.2001.112380 Sandidge JS (2003). Scavenging by brown recluse spiders. Nature 426: 30. Sandidge JS (2004). Predation by Cosmopolitan Spiders Upon the Medically Significant Pest Species Loxosceles reclusa (Araneae: Sicariidae): Limited Possibilities for Biological Control. Journal of Economic Entomology 97(2): 230-234. Saupe EE, Papes M, Selden PA, Vetter RS (2011). Tracking a Medically Important Spider: Climate Change, Ecological Niche Modeling, and the Brown Recluse (Loxosceles reclusa). PloS one, 6(3), e17731 Segovia JMG, Del-Claro K, Willemart RH (2015). Delicate fangs, smart killing: the predation strategy of the recluse spider. Animal Behaviour 101: 169-177. doi: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.12.025 Stoecker WV, Green JA, Gomez HF (2006). Diagnosis of loxoscelism in a child confirmed with an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and noninvasive tissue sampling. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 55(5): 888-890. doi: 10.1016/j.jaad.2006.04.065 Vetter RS, Barger DK (2002). An Infestation of 2,055 Brown Recluse Spiders (Araneae: Sicariidae) and No Envenomations in a Kansas Home: Implications for Bite Diagnoses in Nonendemic Areas. Journal of Medical Entomology 39(6): 948-951. Vetter, RS (2015). The Brown Recluse Spider. Cornell University Press. Vetter RS (2005). Arachnids submitted as suspected brown recluse spiders (Araneae: Sicariidae): Loxosceles spiders are virtually restricted to their known distributions but are perceived to exist throughout the United States. Journal of Medical Entomology 42: 512-521. Wasserman GS, Anderson PC (1983). Loxoscelism and Necrotic Arachnidism. Journal of Toxicology: Clinical Toxicology 21(4&5): 451-472. doi: 10.3109/15563658308990434
Great video. Had a good friend show me a bite that went into necrosis. He didn’t have many other friends. 10 days after he showed me a small hole in his chest he died. Life can be dark and cold
Hi there Travis. Is there a way you could give a live link to the references you've posted? I have an interest in these spiders since one of my brothers was bitten by a recluse. I personally never saw it, but the medical report of the envenomation showed that the spider was of the recluse family. I am here in South Africa and I was unaware that recluses even existed here. A misunderstanding in communication between my mother and brother delivered a real funny line when the "violin" marking was described which turned into "...he was bitten by a "violent" spider...
Definitely… wolfies might just be some of the most docile spiders I’ve personally encountered, and to hear that recluses are even less defensive than them is telling!! Truly some of the most over sensationalized spiders on the planet.
Whoa, my two favorite spider channels in the same place. Yeah, I saw a video of a guy sticking his hand into a box of brown recluse, and even trying to annoy them, but they only ran away. Edit: Oh, it was Kevin.
Grass spiders and wolf spiders are runners, but they just don't want you to kill them. I've trapped them to rescue them, even by hand, and once I get them where they settle down and they know I'm not going to squash them, they accept the ride outside and are shy about leaving. They gotta know it's safe first.
As a dermatologist and skin cancer surgeon, I greatly appreciate your fair and incredibly accurate treatment of the dynamics in the patient-physician relationship that leads to vast over-diagnosis of “brown recluse” spider bite even in wonky places like New York and Michigan. It has gotten to the point where I’ve heard trainees saying the spider-bites are “associated” with MRSA infection …. Smh. 🤦 Either the spiders are injecting MRSA or their diagnosis is wrong.
I was wondering how often mrsa (or mercy as I call it) was mistaken for recluse bites. I live in eastern ks & have both brown recluse & black widows. My house is 100yrs old. The framing & what not makes it hard to seal. Some yrs there are very few in my house. For some reason, this yr has been bad. I've been killing 1 per night on avg in my tub. I try to avoid killing wolf spiders or other non vinemouse that compete. I've gotta say, there is something about the brown recluse that freaks me out. They think. They They aren't just instinct actors. They have a situational awareness & an awareness of their surroundings that amazes me still. I've had more than play dead & lie there in a ball, even twitching. As I watched them out of the corner of my eye, they slowly unball until I turned my head & it curled back up real fast
Thank you so much! Your support means a lot, and it goes a long way toward keeping this channel going. I'm honored you found the video valuable enough to contribute to the channel. I appreciate it!
Out of all spiders, perhaps none are subject to more consistent and unnecessary fear mongering and misinformation as this one; and to have a channel like you, who looks at these subjects completely objectively and scientifically, come out and give accurate and honest information without the need to unnecessarily sensationalize is just awesome. Thank you for all the wonderful content you’ve put out and thank you for being you :)
I'd say that that Brazilian wandering spiders and Aussie funnel-webs are WAY more hated than widows and recluses combined. Everyone makes these guys out to be some kind of hyper aggressive demons that'll kill you instantly.
I was going to defend my home state of Florida but literally two hours ago my cousin screamed thinking there was a brown recluse in my car. It was just my car spider, Miranda. She's probably a long-legged sac spider? Shes not a widow or a recluse so she just kinda lives in my passenger door. It's hard to identify a small, pale brown spider.
In 100 years of arachnological data, only around 70 recluse spiders (Loxosceles) have ever been found in the state of Florida. But of course, in six years, over 844 diagnoses of brown recluse bites were reported. Similarly to South Carolina as discussed in the video.
"Destructively sampled" sounds more like what I do when left with unattended cheesecake, lol. Everything about this video is great; the little songs/jingles, the well presented acknowledgement of the worst case scenarios, and the amount of well-sourced information presented in a layperson friendly manner. Thanks to this channel, I was able to identify and make my peace with the "cellar" spider living in a high spot of my hallway ceiling (so obviously, "Cellar spider" is a misleading name, but I appreciate our polite roommate... she earns her keep and takes care of the occasional gnats or fruit flys or whatever!)
I've lived in Missouri most of my life and I've only seen two bites from these spiders. I got bit once putting on a glove when I had to shovel snow outside. Nothing really happened and it was a while back so I don't remember much of any pain. I remember having a red bump on my finger and that's about it. Second bite I went to visit my mother and when she had put her house shoes on there was one hiding in the shoe. Having nerve damage in her feet from her diabetes she didn't notice it was there until she took her shoes off and the squished spider fell out. About a day went by and she started complaining her toe hurt and when I told her to go see a doctor, she refused. A week later she calls me asking me to take her to the ER because skin on her toe was turning black and starting to hurt really badly even with the nerve damage. She let the bite get so bad it turned the skin around the bite area necrotic, and she got a severe infection leading to having to get her toe amputated before the infection turned septic and spread any further.
Oh no, that's terrible! I wonder if the diabetes complicated it, too, as diabetic ulcers very closely mimic recluse bites, so I wonder if one would amplify the other as well. But an infection can really take things from bad to worse. I'm sorry to hear this.
@@travismcenery2919It's possible but she has pretty good control over her diabetes and had never had a diabetic ulcer before and still hasn't that I'm aware of. She's been a pretty good sport about it too, mostly just laughing it off and even after the surgery seemed more annoyed at needing physical therapy than she was losing her big toe.
Same here. I've known two people who got bit by brown recluse, and only because they were both immunocompromised. One by diabetes and MS, the other by substance abuse. I KNOW I've been bitten by brown recluse. And it was a little shallow bite, probably from bed. And honestly, even a regular spider bite is pretty uncommon. I usually don't even have an issue with spiders I live with after we get used to each other's routines 😂 So a new place requires extra vigilance, and maybe a little more vacuuming to scare away most insects/bugs.
Hey thank you for your comment. Quick question... did either bite swell up and have puss come out of each individual pore of the skin? Thank you so very much for your kind reply.
@@kg-WhatthehelliseventhatThe time I got bit, just a small red bump and I don't remember feeling much pain and there was no pus. It was no worse than a bee sting. For my mother's bite I don't know. When she got bit I had left her place before any major reaction occurred and by the time I saw her again a week later she had developed the infection. I remember her big toe and part of her foot were red and swollen with an open sore with a blackish ring around it where she was bit. I'll leave out the specific details to avoid grossing anyone out. My guess is there was a scab initially there that had fallen off though. That was when I took her to the ER. I don't think the spider bite itself did any really lasting damage. It was more the infection which came from lack of care for the open sore. She didn't have it bandaged or anything and regularly wore fuzzy woolen and leather house shoes.
Thank you SO MUCH for these videos, I'm a recovering arachnophobe who is an avid watcher. I used to not be able to be in the same room as a tiny spider, but I've learned so much about them and their behavior from peeps like you and @MyWildBackyard . Thanks to your videos I was able to not only approach a tarantula today, but cup it and have a nice close up look at it before safely releasing it. I now have a newfound respect and love for these creatures.
I just commented this same thing 🤣 2 years ago I would have a panic attack if I saw a spider. Channels like this gave me a new perspective. Adopted a tarantula last year. ❤
I'm glad to hear that you're coming to love something you found so scary before! Spiders are wonderful and I think people in general would be less anxious if they got to see stuff like this more often!
That is so great to hear, and thank you! And yeah, Spencer has been doing great work for years now, and helped a lot of people gain a new appreciation for these animals.
I live solidly within the brown recluse range, and I've spotted them now and then (though seeing house spiders and wolf spiders is a lot more common). I finally got nailed by one a little less than 2 years ago (mid-May) -- or at least so I say, with as much certainty as I can, because I got bitten in my sleep and never found the culprit. Whatever it was, the little sucker got me on the back of the shoulder THREE TIMES. When I woke up the next morning, the spot was itchy, and I took a look at it and went, "Dangit, mosquito got me in my sleep treating me like a gorram tapas plate," and thought nothing of it. A couple days later, the center of one of the bites developed a black spot. "Huh. That's...weird. Mosquito bites don't do that." And then the spot got darker and bigger and my friends started yelling at me to go to the doctor, so I did. "I thought it was a mosquito, but, uh, maybe brown recluse?" And he was all, "Could be." But we didn't know for sure, so to cover all the potential bases he hit me with an antibiotic and corticosteroid. (Note to all: prednisone-induced insomnia SUCKS. It especially sucks when you're experiencing it the night before a convention that you're helping *run*. I was a looped-out zombie that weekend. I don't even know whether it helped anything at all.) In the end, two of the three bites went necrotic, but the resulting lesions were extremely small. Interestingly, the bites all occurred on and around a keloid-type chicken pox scar, and the levels of necrosis all directly corresponded to how on-top of the old scar they were. The one in the center of it was the worst, but even with that one you can barely find the dent, especially with the other scar tissue mucking up the visual. But yeah, that's how my old chicken pox scar turned into a tiny skin volcano I call Mount Recluvius.
@@MadGunny all in all, I found the theoretical idea of getting bitten to be much worse than the actual experience of it (aside from the Prednisone aspect). Weirdly enough, I think this actually eased some of my arachnophobia. I mean, anything that ended in that kind of premium-grade pun can't be all bad, can it?
Living most of my 40*mutter* years in rural southern Missouri, seemingly EVERYone around here - myself included - has a brown recluse story, but in all those years, no one - again, myself included - has ever *conclusively* suffered the kind of tissue-damaging bite we all have been trained to watch for, nor even directly know anyone who has. It's always "a friend of a friend of an uncle knows someone whose young child had to be rushed to the hospital", or "...nearly lost a [body part]" anecdotes. Even knowing it's ultra-rare, I can't help but get nervous every time I clean out an old shed, and get easily startled by small- to mid-sized brown spiders skittering across my floor. I freely admit that this informative video prompted involuntary heebee-geebees.Think I'll watch another...
Same here very few actual stories. Have seen a few bites that were down right nasty and muscle showing from friends family in medical. Only 3 of those in 40 years
Yup, had brown recluses in my bathroom a couple months ago actually, woke up one morning with a small red bug bite on the back of my knee that MIGHT have been from one, but it went away after a couple days and didn’t get any worse than a small dark red circle lol
Yeah the couple of cases that I know of where the spider was verified as a reclusive some kind, the necrotic tissue was small and just kind of annoying. Every absolutely horrific case has come from one where nobody even saw the spider and it was just because the doctor told them it was from a spider. When antibiotic resistant bacteria started causing flesh wounds that didn't respond to antibiotics doctors started to assume that that meant it must be from the venom of a bite and never even considered that the bacteria could be resistant to the antibiotic. Now antibiotic resistant bacteria causing necrosis is so incredibly common it's ridiculous that there's still people out there who are making that confusion and of course anytime you have the skin broken You're at risk of having one of those infections happen regardless of how the skin broke but I'm sure having a tiny necrotic spot provides fuel for a larger fire.
Hey Travis, I've had probably the worst day of my entire career; everyone yelled at me for no reason, but such is life- this is where I came as soon as I got home, this was my relaxation of choice. Thank you so much for your videos man, I just wanted to share with you that your videos are more than just videos for some people. Keep up the awesome work and thanks for all you do! - Charlotte
My recluse story: In 2000 I bought 2 story house with attached garage in a small rural town in the southern tip of Illinois. That summer we put vinyl siding on the entire house and garage. Because my wife was a terrible driver and I am lazy, I stored all the extra siding on the floor of the unused space in the garage. The next spring we started seeing Brown Recluse all over the house. They would hang out on the walls, climb across your legs while watching tv etc. We had the house sprayed, but it didn't help much. Then one day I went out to the garage to grab an piece of siding to repair a damaged piece on the house. It was then I found the problem. As I picked up the siding, I revealed hundreds of them. Possibly thousands. And yes, I am certain. At the time I had a bit of arachnophobia and had researched them thoroughly, the info in this video was known to me then. Subsequently, a 30 minute job of removing the siding from the garage took me 4 and half hours filled with skin crawling terror. Another round of spraying and the problem was solved along with my arachnophobia. Just in time for the arrival of a baby and to prevent my wife from divorcing me. I can attest to their non-aggression. Even with the dozens and dozens of encounters, no one was bitten to my knowledge. Edit: 23 years later I still vigorously shake out my towel before drying after a shower and tap out shoes I haven't worn for more than a day. LOL.
Honestly, if you live anywhere with potentially dangerous small animals, knocking out boots and double checking clothing/towels/bedding should just be habit. Of course, with that being said, I know plenty of people don't have the mind to check both ways at crossings, so there's only so much to expect.
Glad you were able to solve the problem! That's IPM right there, finding what conditions are making your house good habitat for them, and fixing that problem. Nicely done, and glad you got through it okay!
Here in Southern IL, I have noticed that if you start seeing Wolf Spiders, they are there because you have plenty of Brown Recluse on sight. Recluse & Sipders in general, do not "Groom Themselves" and that makes it hard to eradicate them by spraying, unless you can spray them directly. But They Are Good Eating..., but It Takes THOUSANDS To Make A Sandwich..... 😂🤣😂
Really good point about people advertising spider bites as a kind of badge of courage or pride lol. It’s a weird thing we humans do but I’ve totally noticed it with friends and colleagues. “Got this gnarly painful bump, I think a spider bit me!”
I was listening to this video at work when a little jumping spider crawled onto my desk. Had it been a year prior I would've panicked and squashed it, but thanks to your series I have gained an appreciation for the little guys. Thanks for all that you do!
An hour and 20 minute video explaining everything we know about Loxosceles reclusa... this may be one of the greatest videos ever published to this platform. Grab the wife, grab the kids, grab some popcorn, and grab a drink. This is one to enjoy.
Truth! I wasn't sure about the 1:20, but super engaging and entertaining, time eased by. (Unlike Dune part 1 for people who hadn't read the book 😸). Top tier content (about spiders!) that rivals PBS or BBC. 💜🕷️
Actually, I shared this video with my sister after about 15 minutes. We're living in Red Zone Texas but were born/raised in Chicago. Down here 17 or so years now. YT algorithm sent me here, and I am happy about it! I know I have seen black widows but now think I've seen a true recluse maybe once (twice?) since coming down. THANK YOU for the interesting/informative video with a touch of humor; my blood pressure appreciates it 😉
I live in west Texas and I was bit by a brown recluse. I went into my shed to pull out a drawer I had stored in there. I didn’t even know I was bit on my left forearm until later on that night. It progressively started getting worse and spread up & down my arm. That morning I went to a public clinic. The nurse (who had 6 or 7 letters behind her name) that identified the bite. She indicated that she had seen it before. She numbed it and cut a triangle notch out of my arm where the bite was and shoved gauss into the hole in my arm. She did this several times. She loaded me up on antibiotics for a couple of months. She advised me to keep my arm above my heart as much as possible. At one point my arm (from the tip of my finger to the middle of my forearm) swoll up and turned a glassy peach color but thankfully it didn’t do any long term damage.
I almost lost a leg due to these when I moved to the southern US. I thought nothing of them, they didn't hurt or seem like anything. Then my leg turned black and lost 25% of the muscle in the hospital.
This is so true. My first bite was in 1970 on my thigh above the knee. I could feel the bite sharply for almost half an hour and jumped in the tub to scrub it (probably not the greatest idea). Took forever to heal. My second bite was on the same leg above the ankle. Turned black in a dime size area. Itched rather than hurt and I treated it with essential oils. (Second bite was 35 years later)
😬😬 I'm sorry you both experienced that. I'm not a fan of Any spider really....they creep me out! But man these are especially scary they can do so much damage to a human. I hope you guys have healed 🙏💞🙏
@@russianaloha4576Thanks! Healed OK after 2nd bite but have a little dent where the muscle died. Funny; this video erased any lingering fear I had of them!
1 hour 20 minutes. I LOVE the direction this channel is taking in terms of providing long form content. A sincere THANK YOU for not adhering to the shallow and shortsighted TH-cam "wisdom" of making shorter content.
You're most welcome, and thanks for sticking it out! I don't want all my videos to be this long (took me two months to make this one), but I do enjoy the deep dives, and this species deserved the time spent, in my opinion.
So, I actually let a bunch of False Widows build wherever they want in my house and moved egg sacks around to help them spread. I noticed how efficient they were at cleaning up flying insects and that they stayed put. (Things I also learned from your videos). After a year of this strategy of just letting the false widows have the baseboards, I stopped seeing ANY Brown Recluse in the house. I used to see them often and I have plenty little openings here. The floor around my bed has many false widows and they stop a lot of bugs. They also collect the bodies of their dead together in a little silk wrapped bundles which make it easy to clean up after them! I live in the Nashville Tn area. I have other spiders I let live and encourage them to stay out of my active areas by shewing them off. The competition I've encouraged really seems to have helped. I do have spiders around my floor which might creep some out but I understand they pose me no danger so they get to stay and be helpful! Thanks for the work!
Hey Travis! Man I was so excited when I saw you uploaded! This was an incredible video! In my 1.5 years in pest control in central New Jersey, I've seen a total of 3 brown recluse, and all 3 were very old and on glueboards in the basement of a single home where the husband had moved from Texas and had many cardboard boxes stored in the basement. We heavily monitored the house for months and found no additional activity, so I can absolutely concur that they did not establish a breeding population and seemed to just die out. Absolutely love Kevin; I really fail to understand how IPM isn't the standard across pest control companies. I focused on IPM before I even learned what it was out of just... common sense. My company also focuses on it but I definitely take it to an extreme, exhausting all possible options before resorting to pesticide usage. 1:10:58 and 1:13:51 are easily my favourite moments in the entirety of TH-cam, because same. Love this video so much! Keep up the awesome work Travis! - Charlotte
@@allbugsgotokevin Oh hey Kevin! This is also definitely something I strive for as well. I just passed my Core and 7A and am currently studying for my 13 and 7B, so I will be learning more about IPM as it relates to schools in the coming months. Keep up the awesome work, my brother in pest control!
Thanks Charlotte, and I'm glad you enjoyed it! I couldn't have made this video without Kevin's contributions - most of the photos in it are his, and of course his demonstrations were crucial.
@@travismcenery2919 I so appreciate you asking. It was a lot of fun! I can't imagine how many hours you put into this. It's so well done. I'm honored to be a part.
Another thing I want to say, is that I was bitten by a brown recluse in my house in SW Ohio in the early 2000's. I picked up a pair of shorts that were folded on a chair, (not on the floor) & put them on. I felt a horrible sharp pain at the top left of my right knee & immediately pushed the shorts down & off. I never saw it. The pain was overcome by the most intense itching I've ever felt in my life. My knee was swelling in front of my eyes, it was unreal. It swelled to the size of a grapefruit or softball. My knee turned many shades of blues, greens, purples & last, black over the course of a few months. I showed my daughter a few weeks later & she wanted me to go to the hospital. I never did but now, 20 years later, I wish I had, just to get it documented. I also wish I'd taken pictures. I've been bitten by other spiders, stung by a bumble bee, yellow jacket & a wasp, but those hurt for a couple minutes to an hour. I've never experienced anything like this before. I've always been tall, lanky & athletic. I used to find the small, thin, round pancake like egg sacks on my basement windows, outside & inside, usually on the North side of the house. There were tall, old Yew bushes close up to the house. I found a small dead brown recluse in the basement once, on the floor in front of the washer & dryer. You might question if I misidentified the spider, but I've always been interested in bugs, spiders, bees, etc & am confident.
Just casually singing "doesn't even have a butt - not loxosceles!" as I point at random objects in my office today :) This video was amazing, informative, and as always reassuring to someone like me, still working on getting over the willies whenever I see spiders. Your excitement for spiders is contagious, I love hearing you talk about them with such admiration and respect, thank you!
his unassuming humor is so good, caught me off guard too, but it's right on target - points out the oversight of the school system and city officisls. If the school areas are being scouted by child killing animals, where's the guardians that are looking out for the kids?????????????
@@wa13601 If the animals are scouting but not making any attacks, sounds like the officials are doing enough to protect the kids. Part of protecting kids is taking extra precautions when a predator is known to be near. Killing or relocating the predator is not the only solution, and often doesn't work very well anyway.
Wow, thank you so much for the support! I really appreciate it, and it really helps keep the channel going. I'm glad it was clear and helpful, and good luck! Thank you!
Awesome video! When the "Not Loxosceles" song came on, I felt certain that the video would be ending soon (I hadn't looked at the length before clicking). Was totally surprised and delighted to learn that you'd put that gem in such an inconspicuous place in the video. Overall, super entertaining and educational. Thanks for the work that you do!
Pathologist here - in the NE there are millions of Cheiracanthium mildei. Can't tell ya how many C. m. bites were mistakenly attributed to recluse spiders - which we do not have around here. C. mildei can give a fairly bad bite for same reason as a recluses bite - they get in your bed and you roll over on them. Like recluses, Cheiracanthium is itinerant. Rarely sits in a web (which, btw, when it does, it builds it in a corner between the ceiling and the wall - looks like a little cocoon). It does look a lot like a recluse, and its venom can cause necrosis like a recluse but there's usually too little of it.
@@mikezylstra7514 I did a video on C. mildei - the research and evidence actually suggests that their venom doesn't cause necrosis. That belief traced back to a single paper from 1970, in which none of the five subject patients with necrotic lesions actually saw a spider bite them. But the paper got cited as established fact (despite the authors saying the evidence was circumstantial). Check out the video if you like, and all the papers I cited are in the description, I think.
@@travismcenery2919 I don't see how the yellow sac spider, an actual yellow spider, can be confused with the brown recluse, the shape of the spider isn't even that similar and they are uh, yellow. Not to mention they have no fiddle mark and aren't even brown. Yellow sac spiders being misidentified as a brown recluse can be prevented by literally 2 seconds of research and I don't know how ppl mix them up
I'm looking for a way to do something like this without the negative effects that really short videos can have on a long-form channel. If I release it somewhere I'll say so in the community tab!
I just released it as it's own video. I'm blow away at how many people have requested that. th-cam.com/video/-X2QS2DBuKY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=2ZoqnpeoxEaklv2b
My late husband was bitten by something when he was stationed at Ft. Carson Colorado and after not feeling well with the bite becoming swollen and bright red lines running from the bite area up his arm. I took him to the hospital on base and the Doctors had no idea what was causing the reaction he was having. They came to the conclusion he'd been bitten by a Brown Recluse spider, but I was sceptical. For one thing they said he probably got bit when he was sleeping. I told them that I'd never seen a single spider in our apartment having lived there for over a year. In the end they gave him an injection of something they said might help along with antibiotics. That bite left a quarter sized hole that left a scar he had for the rest of his life. Thanks for this information and now I'm sure I was right about it not being a Brown Recluse, I'll never know what the cause of his bite was.
This is one of the few longer TH-cam videos I've watched from beginning to end. This was a fascinating introduction to one of nature's most misunderstood and maligned creatures. Thank you for all the care and effort you put into it.
"Accepts fate, dies" -some poor harvestman How I feel about most things 😆 Excellent video, not just repeated and plagiarized crap, but actual good in-depth information. I learned quite a but from this one, as I have from all of your videos. Your videos aren't just background noise, I wait until I can relax, watch and learn. Thank you very much!
Excellent video as always and so worth the wait! I was thrilled to see Kevin involved in this one. The identification song made me lol and I would love a time stamp in the description for it. (Or even better - a short of the song by itself for my friends that wont be bothered to watch a full spider video 😊) Excited to see what your next video is about! ❤
Thank you so much for the support! I appreciate it! I'm still working out the best way to release the song but I'll announce it on the community tab when I do.
These have been my favorite videos on TH-cam since you’ve started, thank you so much for all the effort and care put into the subject! Was always told by multiple people that the two spiders to worry about here in Colorado were Black Widows and Brown Recluse, but as you’ve said we don’t really have any Brown Recluse spiders. There’s something very interesting in how we’re inclined to mythologize these little creatures into something so very larger than life, to the point they have a ‘phantom’ range that spreads well beyond their habitat. Fascinating video and great work as always!
I work in the pest control industry in Missouri. Brown recluse infestations are extremely common here. It is likely impossible to fully exterminate them. But that's okay because in houses with recluses I don't see many other spiders or insects. Chemical insecticides can reduce their numbers, but I would recommend using glue traps under furniture and in closets, and especially in furnace rooms, storage rooms, and other rooms that aren't occupied (they're smart enough to avoid people for the most part.) The point is to reduce their populations in a home so they're not a nuisance but to leave enough that they can still be beneficial. Personally I'd rather have brown recluse that I don't see often than, say, roaches that I can see.
Brown Recluses feed on Packrat Insects like Silverfish and Firebrats. People with Clutter are more than likely going to have Brown Recluse infestation.
I can definitely appreciate this approach. I mean I generally hate killing spiders at all, but I get that in extreme cases, there isn't much choice. But they're great pest control.
I had them and wolf spiders all at the same time even one of those weird louse hunter spiders (i'm also in missouri) and other spiders eat recluses too
An hour and 20 minutes goes by so fast with this channel. I could listen to you talk about spiders for ten hours straight and not get bored, probably. It also very very much helps that I get to occasionally watch someone piss off a spider for science. And your humor!!! Entertaining, hilarious, educational, nerdy as fuck. I take every chance I can get to share niche and extremely specific spider facts I learned from this channel.
I LOVED the time I've spent here tonight, almost 3 hours. I watched ALL of your video and then read about 1000 comments. I agree with every good thing said about your channel and I subscribed. This was just so well presented, and best of all so ENTERTAINING. (I know I'm shouting) I have been bitten and it became necrotic, went to the hospital and they debrided. (sp?) Pretty sure it was a BR but who knows. The main point of my comment is to express admiration and appreciation for your channel!! I just loved the humor of it too. Presenting the facts as just facts was great. And showing the references!... Exceptional. And you showed enough clips in different positions that I am now CERTAIN that I can identify a BR. And living in Tennessee, this is helpful! Also thanks to your many commenters! I laughed a lot at some of the stories. I watch LOTS of youtube videos and I think that the folks here commented with more content than any other channel I've watched. Spider folks are SMART! haha.♥
I lived in CA up through high school and the fear of the brown recluse was very real. I never saw one and I was very active in the boy scouting program. I am honestly not surprised CA had so many bad submissions. great video!
I think about the southern half of CA is home to the desert recluse, Loxosceles deserta, so there IS a recluse species there. Also, in Los Angeles county, there are a few buildings that have populations of Loxosceles laeta, the Chilean recluse, which actually has an even more potent bite, but those are isolated populations in a handful of commercial buildings.
Another Californian here, we've definitely have the fear of the brown recluse. Maybe it comes from the Okies who likely brought a few, which likely didn't survive. Such chill creatures, undeserving of their bad reputation. Btw I love the song, and I'm never going to forget "recleese."🕷️✌️😎
The Songs!!! Were Amazing!!! The entire video was suffused with respect and kindness towards our spidery friends, especially needed and appreciated on this maligned group. Cheese test unneeded: they'd likely simply run away. Big kudos toward your horizontal gene transfer animations. Going to start saying Recleese btw.
I once knew a young man who lost over half of his calf to the brown recluse spider. (He was obese and had a lot of fat in that area). He was working on clearing out a woodpile in a warehouse…Missouri. Perfect habitat. Anyway, his tissue started to rot, and had to be removed. Left a large hole in his leg.
I'm from Missouri. I had one bite me an the back of my forearm three to four inches from my elbow several, or rather numerous years ago. It started out as a small red bump that eventually ended up being as big as a half dollar. The center of the bite turned yellow and rotted away or fell out. (It looked exactly like the image of the ankle on the Bing search, "Brown Recluse bite.") It eventually healed up leaving a dent in my arm. To this day I still have that dent in my arm from the bite.
I'm in rural Missouri and am pretty familiar with brown recluse, and I've only been bitten once. It was a nonissue because I knew what spider it was, was able to capture it alive (but a bit roughed up) to verify its identity, and sought appropriate medical attention. It was an ideal situation if you're going to be bitten by a recluse, and now I have a realistic perception on them as a species that I just have to live with. When I was younger, I was extremely anxious about them and mistook every similar spider for one, and reacted as expected. 😂 When I was finally bitten and had the fellow in a clear container, I became intimately familiar with the species due to tons of panicked research to make SURE it was a brown recluse before I made a fool of myself! I'll never misidentify another spider as one again, at least. Anyway, I cultivate an introduced wolf spider population to help manage my recluse population, and I believe it has shown improvement. Many folks around my area swear by it.
I haven't read anything about wolf spiders as biocontrol, but it seems sound, with wolfies being a ground active hunter, and likely to encounter the recluse. Not sure how often the wolfie would come out on top, I've never seen data on that. It would be interesting to observe.
@@travismcenery2919 I don't expect them to compete directly; I just want them to outnumber the recluse population so that they crowd them out by eliminating their resources and taking over their niche. Basically, moving in some unruly wolf spider neighbors that steal all the recluses' food until they decide to move on to greener pastures. 😂
Thanks for another great video. As an Australian I love to understand the insects in our environment and seeing the spiders elsewhere in the world is great.
The last place I lived I had an unattached garage filled with Brown recluses. They even would eat each other. I cleaned out the whole garage hosed it down with water let it dry and then sprayed it with bug spray. The purge got them under control but never rid them completely. But I was never bitten. This was in a suburb of St.Louis Missouri. In Missouri you see them so often that it's very easy to know the difference. They even act differently than other spiders in the way they run.
Great video. I've been following Kevin on Facebook for quite some time now and that's where I found the link to your video. Spiders fascinate me and always have. I know a lot of people who think every kind of brown spider they see has to be a recluse. I am 70 years old and have lived in Texas the majority of my life. I've never actually seen a brown recluse although they've probably been in and around every place I've lived in this state. Proving that their common name of recluse is well deserved.
This is absolutely top tier content. Very informative, well put together and narrated - and hilarious! 😂 Your videos deserve A LOT of attention. Thanks!
I never knew I needed all of this info about the Brown Recluse. I’m so glad I watched this video. I live in north central SC, and almost exactly one year ago I found a brown recluse in my bathroom. I was 100% positive, but I didn’t check its eyes. I even took a picture of it and many on Facebook agreed it was definitely a Brown Recluse. Now I’m not so sure. And the best thing about this video is, I’m no longer as afraid of getting bit by a recluse as I was. I’m not scared of spiders although I can’t let a tarantula walk up my arm. I tried and I can’t do it. All of the house spiders get free range in my house. They trap fruit flies and other annoying pests, and they’re not hard to clean up after they’re gone. I will trap and relocate Wolf Spiders outside though. I was bit by one 20 years ago and it hurt enough to give them eviction notices whenever they’re skulking around in the house. Great video. Videos like this are what TH-cam was made for!
Glad you liked the song. Due to several requests, I've released it as it's own video, if you're interested. th-cam.com/video/-X2QS2DBuKY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=2ZoqnpeoxEaklv2b
This video brought me to your channel. From this video alone I can tell you're very knowledgeable about spiders and quite engaging. I enjoy your content and hope to see this channel grow!
I got bit four days ago in my sleep on my stomach, I had clutter around the bed , old boxes full of Arrowheads, people this was the most painful experience, it messed up my vision and blood pressure, I felt poisoned. After three days I had to get a shot of antibiotic. This is day 5 and thankfully I have no rotten tissue. I’m paranoid and now have ptsd from this experience. I’m bombing my house tomorrow and I’m constantly looking for these spiders. Please keep your house clean and no clutter!
I'm going to spend today picking up everything on the floor including my cat's cardboard boxes. I spray Home Defense inside my house along where the floors meet the walls hoping if I kill all insects, spiders will have nothing to eat. I will have nightmares about your story.
This video will singlehandedly save hundreds if not thousands of lives. Spider lives. Since humans were never really in much danger from these spiders anyways.
@@LydiAtheistLadyI’ve been bitten by Brown Recluses several times in 2016 and 2017. But I’ve never really bothered to kill one. Because: 1 The bites were very slightly annoying and completely non lethal and non necrotic, and 2. I had Firebrats and Silverfish which are both the BR’s Favorite Food. As long as you don’t have clutter and as long as you don’t have Silverfish and Firebrats, you generally won’t see a Brown Recluse.
Doubt it. When it comes to spiders, most people take the "shoot first, ask questions later" route. Over the course of an 8 week rotation I had 2 women come in claiming their kid was bitten by a brown recluse and another one who insisted it was black widow. Trying to tell them we don't have those in Northern MN was useless. Although I can see why some may mistake a nursery web or fishing spider for a brown recluse.
We have a recluse-like local spider in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. I was convinced it was a recluse for all that I could see from 1+ meters away. When I caught one and put it in a jar, the eyes proved it was not a recluse. I hope my analysis was correct because every picture you show, sans the eyes, is a perfect match for what we have, and we have a lot of them. One morning I was taking a shower, still trying to wake up, and I turned to rinse the soap out of my eyes, and at eye level, just to my left, was one of the local look-alikes. They are pretty big. It was so mellow, just hung there. So I finished my shower, got out, and left it. Came back in an hour and it was gone. Now and then I see one scramble across the floor, or find them caught in a sticky trap in the basement. The good news is that they've never fallen on me, never jumped at me, never chased me down the hall. Whatever they are, they stay very cool, and so I've learned to not even bother them.
I wonder if that is perhaps the Titiotus species? They only occur in California and very little is known about them, and they can be a very close lookalike. But as you say, the eye pattern rules out recluse.
I looked at google images, and although it might be the Titiotus, it seems the sternum is a little too broad in the google images compared to the fellow I see around the house. Next time I have a close-encounter I'll snap a photo. @@travismcenery2919
@donaldwycoff4154 I grew up in the Santa Cruz Mtn’s. Ben Lomand & Boulder creek - we had LOTS of brown recluses and some other huge furry ones - they were in closets, beds, inside sheets, all the corners of the house, wood, etc. My aunt was bitten on her face while sleeping - took 6 months to heal, left a large while spot on her face. So very scary in the bed.
We also have something that looks very much like a recluse here in San Luis Obispo County California but I never checked the eyes. They are always very timid and they hang out on the floor and walls. We are moving out of a house that is full of them (for unrelated reasons) and we all had a major fear of them so I will check those eyes to hopefully better identify the species. It would be such a relief to find out these are a harmless spider. They sure look like a recluse but I never got close enough to check the eyes because of my fear of being bitten. We also have grass spiders and cellar spiders so it would be great to learn they are similarly harmless. Last few years we have invasive brown widows and my infant is crawling so we are cautious about spiders. I will keep an eye out for dark urine and that "bad kidney smell." Thank you so much!
Travis, this was a great video. I think it covered everything a layman should want to know about the Brown Recluse. I wrote a while back about when I worked in a female prison and there were cases of "necrotizing spider bites" The medical doctor documented this. And successfully treated these cases with antibiotics. I searched around and found no spiders, let alone any Recluses. Also, we were north of the spiders range in Illinois. I reasoned that these were cases of MRSA caused by leaning in the unsterile walls of the shower. All of these areas were on the upper arm, the butt, and hip. Again, Travis, this was a very informative video. Thanks. John
I’ve had this in my watch later waiting for me to get ready to dive into the world of spiders. Finally decided to actually watch it & I’m so glad i did! A great comprehensive and informative video, with some humor in the right places. Time to watch all of your other videos!
I stumbled upon this video completely accidentally, and I couldn't be happier. I love video essays but I've never looked for any on spiders or animals in general, and finding this essay which so scientific, interesting and fun at the same time (the songs were so cute my wife had tears in her eyes) is like winning a lottery. Amazing content Travis, im arachnophobic but I still watched the whole thing breath-taken. Thank you so much.
Your videos have really helped me start overcoming my arachnophobia! I've even got to the point where I can hold one up to the size of a quarter and be chill with it! I haven't been bit even when I pick them up and now I find them pretty cute. I make sure to only hold the safe ones though, jumping spiders are my favorites and I used to be terrified of them! Thank you for making these videos and educating people!
@@fastinradfordable considering that i used to hyperventilate and be unable to sleep if I found one in my room, even if I had someone else kill it. I'd say yeah, I had arachnophobia it took me a long time to get to where I am now.
@@fastinradfordableI'd agree, but there are also levels of phobia. Jumping spiders are perfectly fine to me, but anything with long legs is an instant nope. Phobias aren't really rational.
Thanks Travis! I learned more about this spider than I have ever known. Firstly, I live in MD, and even though I've never seen one, I've had countless people tell me they are in our state. Good thing I take hearsay with a grain of salt. Gonna subscribe and check out some more of your stuff in the future. Very informative and you have a way of drawing me in. Keep up the great work, man.
Loved your video. Who knew I would be so entertained by a spider video? You! That's who. Great job and fabulous humor. Thank you for one of my evening's bright spots. I have a small life 😂😂😂
"It's a nice country." "No." 😂 I was wheezing! Recleese and that song? Love it. Spider info has right to be this funny. Omg, I hadn't seen the Kansas bit! Legit woke my dad up across the house from cackling like a crazy person.
The Brown Recluse effect. “You shouldn’t keep a Doberman as a pet they are extremely dangerous?” “Why…? How…?” “Well my uncle once had a Doberman and he kicked the shit out of it repeatedly and then it attacked him and bit him, so therefore Dobermans are extremely dangerous”
Always really appreciate your takes on spiders, especially covering such an infamous spider that's gotten a lot of grief over the years. You do a great job giving these animals respect on accounts of being fascinating and still potentially dangerous. Thanks for working towards dispelling myths about these guys!
I really loved this video and I'm so happy you did justice to the brown (and other) recluse spiders. I usually watch your videos the second I see you've uploaded a new one. This one is pretty long, though, and I have been waiting for a day when I finally had enough time to watch all the way through in one sitting. It was well worth the wait, though I will have the "It's Not Loxosceles" song (13:27) stuck in my head for days. 🕷 👍🏻🕷
My childhood home had an infestation of Desert Recluse. We let a couple local lizards go inside the house one summer. Apart from being a joy to see hanging around the house, they actually did remove all of our spiders. We never had a problem with them again. Let the lizards go back outside at the end of summer.
Oh. In the summer here in Oregon my cat brings lizards in all day and it's hard to catch them and take them outside. Maybe I'll let them stay. They are adorable.
Thanks for that comprehensive, even-handed showing of that spider I've often wondered about. Always been a bit wary of biting this-and-thats, and when I first moved to the Dallas area, the first thing I did was put some of those cardboard file boxes into an outdoor storage for about a year, then brought a couple of them them back into a little place I got, and I'm pretty sure that storage place had been loaded down with them, and I got a few. (Didn't have the advantage of your nice ID tips, but one guy who seemed knowledgeable had shown me one at work.) When I went back to check my other boxes, saw they were loaded with very reclusey looking spiders, which (unfortunately) got liberally sprayed. (Think it was kind of like what you described in that tree or that house (or one mythical prison?) - when they find a place they like, they really pile on!) Have moved ~70 miles away from that area and no more such sitings. Still worry about them at times, but much less so now! Interesting about your "politeness" index. I and the gal I first came out here to meet both felt that jumping spiders appear to be highly sociable (actually) though likely it is some kind of chemical attraction. Anyway, hope to see more of yours in the future.
A friend of mine almost lost the lower part of his leg from a brown recluse bite. Had a hole the size of a quarter that almost hit his bone. Had it gone any further, doctors said they would cut his leg off at the knee. All from a single bite just above his ankle.
I was bitten by a brown recluse a few years ago, totally my own fault! We were in the process of moving and had cardboard boxes everywhere. I laid on the floor on a pile of broken down boxes. Recluse thought it was going to be crushed so it tagged the back of my calf real good! At first it was a horrible stinging pain, the next day it was swollen and so so tender! I couldn’t handle even my clothing touching it! Another day or two it opened up and was a nasty open wound, it looked like pus inside but would not come out at all! It took a few weeks to heal, I still have dime sized scar from it.
I spent three and a half months in the hospital fighting necrotizing fachitis I had been bitten by a brown recluse repeatedly in my sleep I got really lucky.
I got bit by a Brown Recluse when I was a cable tech, I was in a crawl space in a house built in the 1930s. I was lucky enough to catch the damn thing in a bag so it was positivity identified. When I went to the hospital it wasn’t to rough, however, it left a weird scar on my hand and my thumb has had this weird tingle in it ever since.
This is brilliant! You and your humor are brilliant! So I’m watching this at 1am, probably gonna watch it again with my bf. I’ve yet to introduce your channel to him, but typically he ends up liking the things I like. I got him stuck on Snake Discovery, Clint’s Reptiles and Ants Canada, so I could see him liking your channel too. I’m still terrified of spiders unfortunately, but I think I could get over it to some extent. I love informative channels. Info channels are so important to helping people get over fear.
One time my cousins brothers girlfriends uncles dogs babysitter was moving some boxes and a brown recluse ran out and she bit one of its legs off and then the rest of the spider just rotted away. True story.
I honestly love that your biggest inconvenience related to your wife's healthcare were the parking fees. I work at a children's hospital in Texas, and many parents here will gladly go bankrupt if it means saving their children. I just wish our citizens didn't have to choose between financial security, and their children's lives.
Yeah, we really shouldn't complain too much. The tradeoff is really long wait times for non-life-threatening stuff. But if it's a life or death emergency, yeah, it's there for us. Hard for us to imagine life without it.
I was bitten on my foot between my toes 15 yrs ago. It swelled all the way up to my knee and it was all a reddish purple in color from being so swollen. I couldn’t walk on it. After 10 days the swelling finally started going down. It was so painful and if I barely touched it, the pain was excruciating. I was fortunate the bite was between my toes, not much muscle/fat for the poison to eat away the tissue, so no damage to my foot.
Hi. Recovering arachnophobe ( Thank you!) and fellow Canadian here. I originally found the channel looking for info on the Parson's Spider. I found one in our apartment, and I thought it was odd to see it indoors. You'll be happy to know I let it hang around. Also, thanks to your common house spider video, I now have several co-existing happily with me. I still can't handle sac spiders, but I'm trying. This video though, you went hard on this one and it's been wildly entertaining. It still makes me laugh like an idiot even the 6th or 7th time in. The identification song is the catchiest damn thing. I've been singing it for weeks every time I see our house spiders. "It's a nice country!" "No." Peak Canadian right there. 😂 Thanks for the wonderful sense of humour mixed with such great information. I appreciate the honesty.
Thank you so much for your kind words. I just released the song asnits own video if you are interested: th-cam.com/video/-X2QS2DBuKY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=2ZoqnpeoxEaklv2b
References
Binford GJ, Cordes MHJ, Wells MA (2005). Sphingomyelinase D from venoms of Loxosceles spiders: evolutionary insights from cDNA sequences and gene structure. Toxicon 45: 547-560. doi: 10.1016/j.toxicon.2004.11.011
Cordes MHJ, Binford GJ (2006). Lateral gene transfer of a dermonecrotic toxin between spiders and bacteria. Bioinformatics 22(3): 264-268. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/bti811
Dias-Lopes C, Paiva AL, Guerra-Duarte C, Molina F, Felicori L (2018). Venomous Arachnid Diagnostic Assays, Lessons from Past Attempts. Toxins 10(9), 365. doi: 10.3390/toxins10090365
Dominguez T (2004). It’s Not a Spider Bite, It’s Community-Acquired Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The Journal of the American Board of Family Practice 17(3): 220-226.
Dunbar JP, Sulpice R, Dugon MM (2019). The kiss of (cell) death: can venom-induced immune response contribute to dermal necrosis following arthropod envenomations? Clinical Toxicology, doi: 10.1080/15563650.2019.1578367
Duperre N, Harms D, Crespo-Perez V, Tapia E (2024). Two new species of the spider genus Loxosceles (Araneae, Sicariidae) from the Ecuadorian Andes. Evolutionary Systematics 8:1-14.
doi: 10.3897/evolsyst.8.107213
Fischer ML, Cokl A, Ramires EN, Marques-da-Silva E, Delay C, Fontana JD, Donatti L, Schneider VF, de Assis Marques F (2009). Sound is involved in multimodal communication of Loxosceles intermedia Mello-Leitao, 1934 (Araneae: Sicariidae). Behavioural Processes 82: 236-243.
Forrester JA, Weiser TG, & Forrester JD (2018). An update on fatalities due to venomous and nonvenomous animals in the United States (2008-2015). Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, 29(1), 36-44.
Fouch B, Coventry S (2007). A Case of Fatal Disseminated Bartonella henselae Infection (Cat-Scratch Disease) With Encephalitis. Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine 131(10): 1591-1594.
Frithsen IL, Vetter RS, Stocks IC (2007). Reports of Envenomation by Brown Recluse Spiders Exceed Verified Specimens of Loxosceles Spiders in South Carolina. J Am Board Fam Med 20(5): 483-488. doi: 10.3122/jabfm.2007.05.060221
Gomez HF, Krywko DM, Stoecker WV (2002). A New Assay for the Detection of Loxosceles Species (Brown Recluse) Spider Venom. Annals of Emergency Medicine 39(5): 469-474. doi: 10.1067/mem.2002.122914
Greene A, Breisch NL, Boardman T, Pagac BB, Kunickis E, Howes RK, Brown PV (2009). The Mediterranean Recluse Spider, Loxosceles rufescens (Dufour): An Abundant but Cryptic Inhabitant of Deep Infrastructure in the Washington, D.C. Area (Arachnida: Araneae: Sicariidae). American Entomologist, 55(3): 158-169
Hite JM (1966). The biology of the brown recluse spider, Loxosceles reclusa Gertsch and Mulaik. Ph.D. dissertation. Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas.
Holfeld A, & Lochner C (2014). Safety of hair dryers. Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschutz und Arbeitsmedizin.
Jensenius Jr JS (2015). A detailed analysis of lightning deaths in the United States from 2006 through 2014. Executive Summary. United States: National Weather Service.
Krywko DM, Gomez HF (2002). Detection of Loxosceles Species Venom in Dermal Lesions: A Comparison of 4 Venom Recovery Methods. Annals of Emergency Medicine 39(5): 475-480. doi: 10.1067/mem.2002.123551
Madrigal GC, Ercolani RL, Wenzl JE (1972). Toxicity from a Bite of the Brown Spider (Loxosceles reclusus). Clinical Pediatrics 11(11): 641-644.
Miller MJ, Gomez HF, Snider RJ, Stephens EL, Czop RM, Warren JS (2000). Detection of Loxosceles Venom in Lesional Hair Shafts and Skin: Application of a Specific Immunoassay to Identify Dermonecrotic Arachnidism. American Journal of Emergency Medicine 18(5): 626-628. doi: 10.1053/ajem.2000.9272
Moran, GJ, Krishnadasan A, Gorwitz RJ, Fosheim GE, McDougal LK, Carey RB, & Talan DA (2006). Methicillin-resistant S. aureus infections among patients in the emergency department. New England Journal of Medicine, 355(7): 666-674.
Patronek GJ, Sacks JJ., Delise KM, Cleary DV, & Marder AR (2013). Co-occurrence of potentially preventable factors in 256 dog bite-related fatalities in the United States (2000-2009). Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 243(12): 1726-1736.
Rader RK, Stoecker WV, Malters JM, Marr MT, Dyer JA (2012). Seasonality of brown recluse populations is reflected by numbers of brown recluse envenomations. Toxicon 60(1): 1-3. doi: 10.1016/j.toxicon.2012.03.012
Rees R, Campbell D, Rieger E, King LE (1987). The Diagnosis and Treatment of Brown Recluse Spider Bites. Annals of Emergency Medicine 16(9): 945-949.
Rosen JL, Dumitru JK, Langley EW, Olivier CAM (2012). Emergency Department Death From Systemic Loxoscelism. Annals of Emergency Medicine 60(4): 439-441. doi: 10.1016/j.annemergmed.2011.12.011
Sams HH, Hearth SB, Long LL, Wilson DC, Sanders DH, King LE (2001). Nineteen documented cases of Loxosceles reclusa envenomation. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 44(4): 603-608. doi: 10.1067/mjd.2001.112380
Sandidge JS (2003). Scavenging by brown recluse spiders. Nature 426: 30.
Sandidge JS (2004). Predation by Cosmopolitan Spiders Upon the Medically Significant Pest Species Loxosceles reclusa (Araneae: Sicariidae): Limited Possibilities for Biological Control. Journal of Economic Entomology 97(2): 230-234.
Saupe EE, Papes M, Selden PA, Vetter RS (2011). Tracking a Medically Important Spider: Climate Change, Ecological Niche Modeling, and the Brown Recluse (Loxosceles reclusa). PloS one, 6(3), e17731
Segovia JMG, Del-Claro K, Willemart RH (2015). Delicate fangs, smart killing: the predation strategy of the recluse spider. Animal Behaviour 101: 169-177. doi: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.12.025
Stoecker WV, Green JA, Gomez HF (2006). Diagnosis of loxoscelism in a child confirmed with an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and noninvasive tissue sampling. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 55(5): 888-890. doi: 10.1016/j.jaad.2006.04.065
Vetter RS, Barger DK (2002). An Infestation of 2,055 Brown Recluse Spiders (Araneae: Sicariidae) and No Envenomations in a Kansas Home: Implications for Bite Diagnoses in Nonendemic Areas. Journal of Medical Entomology 39(6): 948-951.
Vetter, RS (2015). The Brown Recluse Spider. Cornell University Press.
Vetter RS (2005). Arachnids submitted as suspected brown recluse spiders (Araneae: Sicariidae): Loxosceles spiders are virtually restricted to their known distributions but are perceived to exist throughout the United States. Journal of Medical Entomology 42: 512-521.
Wasserman GS, Anderson PC (1983). Loxoscelism and Necrotic Arachnidism. Journal of Toxicology: Clinical Toxicology 21(4&5): 451-472. doi: 10.3109/15563658308990434
Great video.
Had a good friend show me a bite that went into necrosis.
He didn’t have many other friends.
10 days after he showed me a small hole in his chest he died.
Life can be dark and cold
Hi there Travis. Is there a way you could give a live link to the references you've posted? I have an interest in these spiders since one of my brothers was bitten by a recluse.
I personally never saw it, but the medical report of the envenomation showed that the spider was of the recluse family.
I am here in South Africa and I was unaware that recluses even existed here.
A misunderstanding in communication between my mother and brother delivered a real funny line when the "violin" marking was described which turned into "...he was bitten by a "violent" spider...
Holy Jesus i feel bad you had to do all this
@@fastinradfordablemy condolences life is a bitch
Do a video on the Wolf Spider, please.
Kevin’s comments on them being chiller than wolf spiders are really neat. Wolf spiders you have to REALLY have to antagonize to bite
Definitely… wolfies might just be some of the most docile spiders I’ve personally encountered, and to hear that recluses are even less defensive than them is telling!! Truly some of the most over sensationalized spiders on the planet.
they're called recluses for a reason! almost all human bites are a complete accident
Whoa, my two favorite spider channels in the same place. Yeah, I saw a video of a guy sticking his hand into a box of brown recluse, and even trying to annoy them, but they only ran away. Edit: Oh, it was Kevin.
@@CaveyMoth woah, 4 people who like spiders in the same comment thread. so crazy
Grass spiders and wolf spiders are runners, but they just don't want you to kill them. I've trapped them to rescue them, even by hand, and once I get them where they settle down and they know I'm not going to squash them, they accept the ride outside and are shy about leaving. They gotta know it's safe first.
Thanks for asking me to be a part of this video, Travis! I hope to work together again soon.
Ever read up on Australia's "White-tail spiders"?
Your knowledge is so appreciated!!! Thankyou
@@TheKrispyfort
I read about them a while back.
@@isabellavalencia8026
It's my pleasure!
Thanks for recommending this, Kevin! So informative!
As a dermatologist and skin cancer surgeon, I greatly appreciate your fair and incredibly accurate treatment of the dynamics in the patient-physician relationship that leads to vast over-diagnosis of “brown recluse” spider bite even in wonky places like New York and Michigan.
It has gotten to the point where I’ve heard trainees saying the spider-bites are “associated” with MRSA infection …. Smh. 🤦
Either the spiders are injecting MRSA or their diagnosis is wrong.
Thank you so much! Also, there's a study testing the feasibility of MRSA transfer by hobo spiders (turns out they couldn't do it).
I was wondering how often mrsa (or mercy as I call it) was mistaken for recluse bites.
I live in eastern ks & have both brown recluse & black widows.
My house is 100yrs old. The framing & what not makes it hard to seal.
Some yrs there are very few in my house.
For some reason, this yr has been bad. I've been killing 1 per night on avg in my tub.
I try to avoid killing wolf spiders or other non vinemouse that compete.
I've gotta say, there is something about the brown recluse that freaks me out.
They think. They They aren't just instinct actors.
They have a situational awareness & an awareness of their surroundings that amazes me still.
I've had more than play dead & lie there in a ball, even twitching.
As I watched them out of the corner of my eye, they slowly unball until I turned my head & it curled back up real fast
A good, inexpensive device I use for a glue trap is a strip of duct tape sticky side up.
@@travismcenery2919link to that study??? How would you even create an experiment like tha
@@ehfoiwehfowjedioheoih4829 academic.oup.com/jme/article-abstract/48/2/382/893951
Really awesome video! My first from your channel and it was recommended by TH-cam. Wonderfully comprehensive! Thanks!
Thank you so much! Your support means a lot, and it goes a long way toward keeping this channel going. I'm honored you found the video valuable enough to contribute to the channel. I appreciate it!
Out of all spiders, perhaps none are subject to more consistent and unnecessary fear mongering and misinformation as this one; and to have a channel like you, who looks at these subjects completely objectively and scientifically, come out and give accurate and honest information without the need to unnecessarily sensationalize is just awesome. Thank you for all the wonderful content you’ve put out and thank you for being you :)
Thanks so much for the kind words, and I'm glad to do it!
except maybe black widows, but they're way more distinct looking
@@sardonicsardonyx359 That’s another one, yeah
I'd say that that Brazilian wandering spiders and Aussie funnel-webs are WAY more hated than widows and recluses combined. Everyone makes these guys out to be some kind of hyper aggressive demons that'll kill you instantly.
Thank you so much
I have to say, "All bugs go to kevin" is a fantastic channel name!
I appreciate that! My friend Nick came up with it.
There's layers to it and I love it.
It really is, isn't it?
I had a visceral reaction when I heard it. One of the best channel names I’ve never heard.
@@hallonegative thanks!
I was going to defend my home state of Florida but literally two hours ago my cousin screamed thinking there was a brown recluse in my car. It was just my car spider, Miranda. She's probably a long-legged sac spider? Shes not a widow or a recluse so she just kinda lives in my passenger door. It's hard to identify a small, pale brown spider.
In 100 years of arachnological data, only around 70 recluse spiders (Loxosceles) have ever been found in the state of Florida. But of course, in six years, over 844 diagnoses of brown recluse bites were reported. Similarly to South Carolina as discussed in the video.
Are you in Australia??? CAR SPIDER??? 😂
i mean Florida is just Diet Australia. I draw the line at huntsman big enough to eat a possum though.
Ha! As long as Miranda was okay, it's all good, I guess! Love the name.
I came across that paper in the research! Didn't mention it as I only needed one example and this video was already a marathon, but I remember it!
Always glad to have helped man! This was a FANTASTIC one.
Thanks, Spencer, glad you thought so!
Spencer Hoffman and Travis McEnery in ONE video, am I dreaming?
"Destructively sampled" sounds more like what I do when left with unattended cheesecake, lol. Everything about this video is great; the little songs/jingles, the well presented acknowledgement of the worst case scenarios, and the amount of well-sourced information presented in a layperson friendly manner. Thanks to this channel, I was able to identify and make my peace with the "cellar" spider living in a high spot of my hallway ceiling (so obviously, "Cellar spider" is a misleading name, but I appreciate our polite roommate... she earns her keep and takes care of the occasional gnats or fruit flys or whatever!)
You have an unfailing knack of making all these spiders totally adorable, visions of spider saying "What are this" really made me laugh.
I've lived in Missouri most of my life and I've only seen two bites from these spiders. I got bit once putting on a glove when I had to shovel snow outside. Nothing really happened and it was a while back so I don't remember much of any pain. I remember having a red bump on my finger and that's about it.
Second bite I went to visit my mother and when she had put her house shoes on there was one hiding in the shoe. Having nerve damage in her feet from her diabetes she didn't notice it was there until she took her shoes off and the squished spider fell out. About a day went by and she started complaining her toe hurt and when I told her to go see a doctor, she refused. A week later she calls me asking me to take her to the ER because skin on her toe was turning black and starting to hurt really badly even with the nerve damage. She let the bite get so bad it turned the skin around the bite area necrotic, and she got a severe infection leading to having to get her toe amputated before the infection turned septic and spread any further.
Oh no, that's terrible! I wonder if the diabetes complicated it, too, as diabetic ulcers very closely mimic recluse bites, so I wonder if one would amplify the other as well. But an infection can really take things from bad to worse. I'm sorry to hear this.
@@travismcenery2919It's possible but she has pretty good control over her diabetes and had never had a diabetic ulcer before and still hasn't that I'm aware of. She's been a pretty good sport about it too, mostly just laughing it off and even after the surgery seemed more annoyed at needing physical therapy than she was losing her big toe.
Same here. I've known two people who got bit by brown recluse, and only because they were both immunocompromised. One by diabetes and MS, the other by substance abuse.
I KNOW I've been bitten by brown recluse. And it was a little shallow bite, probably from bed. And honestly, even a regular spider bite is pretty uncommon. I usually don't even have an issue with spiders I live with after we get used to each other's routines 😂 So a new place requires extra vigilance, and maybe a little more vacuuming to scare away most insects/bugs.
Hey thank you for your comment. Quick question... did either bite swell up and have puss come out of each individual pore of the skin? Thank you so very much for your kind reply.
@@kg-WhatthehelliseventhatThe time I got bit, just a small red bump and I don't remember feeling much pain and there was no pus. It was no worse than a bee sting. For my mother's bite I don't know. When she got bit I had left her place before any major reaction occurred and by the time I saw her again a week later she had developed the infection. I remember her big toe and part of her foot were red and swollen with an open sore with a blackish ring around it where she was bit. I'll leave out the specific details to avoid grossing anyone out. My guess is there was a scab initially there that had fallen off though. That was when I took her to the ER. I don't think the spider bite itself did any really lasting damage. It was more the infection which came from lack of care for the open sore. She didn't have it bandaged or anything and regularly wore fuzzy woolen and leather house shoes.
Thank you SO MUCH for these videos, I'm a recovering arachnophobe who is an avid watcher. I used to not be able to be in the same room as a tiny spider, but I've learned so much about them and their behavior from peeps like you and @MyWildBackyard . Thanks to your videos I was able to not only approach a tarantula today, but cup it and have a nice close up look at it before safely releasing it. I now have a newfound respect and love for these creatures.
I just commented this same thing 🤣 2 years ago I would have a panic attack if I saw a spider. Channels like this gave me a new perspective. Adopted a tarantula last year. ❤
I'm glad to hear that you're coming to love something you found so scary before! Spiders are wonderful and I think people in general would be less anxious if they got to see stuff like this more often!
That is so great to hear, and thank you! And yeah, Spencer has been doing great work for years now, and helped a lot of people gain a new appreciation for these animals.
I live solidly within the brown recluse range, and I've spotted them now and then (though seeing house spiders and wolf spiders is a lot more common). I finally got nailed by one a little less than 2 years ago (mid-May) -- or at least so I say, with as much certainty as I can, because I got bitten in my sleep and never found the culprit.
Whatever it was, the little sucker got me on the back of the shoulder THREE TIMES. When I woke up the next morning, the spot was itchy, and I took a look at it and went, "Dangit, mosquito got me in my sleep treating me like a gorram tapas plate," and thought nothing of it. A couple days later, the center of one of the bites developed a black spot. "Huh. That's...weird. Mosquito bites don't do that." And then the spot got darker and bigger and my friends started yelling at me to go to the doctor, so I did. "I thought it was a mosquito, but, uh, maybe brown recluse?" And he was all, "Could be." But we didn't know for sure, so to cover all the potential bases he hit me with an antibiotic and corticosteroid.
(Note to all: prednisone-induced insomnia SUCKS. It especially sucks when you're experiencing it the night before a convention that you're helping *run*. I was a looped-out zombie that weekend. I don't even know whether it helped anything at all.)
In the end, two of the three bites went necrotic, but the resulting lesions were extremely small. Interestingly, the bites all occurred on and around a keloid-type chicken pox scar, and the levels of necrosis all directly corresponded to how on-top of the old scar they were. The one in the center of it was the worst, but even with that one you can barely find the dent, especially with the other scar tissue mucking up the visual.
But yeah, that's how my old chicken pox scar turned into a tiny skin volcano I call Mount Recluvius.
Interesting story. I would hate to have those bites
@@MadGunny all in all, I found the theoretical idea of getting bitten to be much worse than the actual experience of it (aside from the Prednisone aspect). Weirdly enough, I think this actually eased some of my arachnophobia.
I mean, anything that ended in that kind of premium-grade pun can't be all bad, can it?
@@rosemarywilliams5183 I’ve been bitten by them like 4 times in a row.
Mount recluvius 😂 top tier pun
"Mount Recluvius" 🤣 Oh that is brilliant! Way to find the humor in the situation.
Living most of my 40*mutter* years in rural southern Missouri, seemingly EVERYone around here - myself included - has a brown recluse story, but in all those years, no one - again, myself included - has ever *conclusively* suffered the kind of tissue-damaging bite we all have been trained to watch for, nor even directly know anyone who has. It's always "a friend of a friend of an uncle knows someone whose young child had to be rushed to the hospital", or "...nearly lost a [body part]" anecdotes. Even knowing it's ultra-rare, I can't help but get nervous every time I clean out an old shed, and get easily startled by small- to mid-sized brown spiders skittering across my floor. I freely admit that this informative video prompted involuntary heebee-geebees.Think I'll watch another...
Same here very few actual stories. Have seen a few bites that were down right nasty and muscle showing from friends family in medical. Only 3 of those in 40 years
Yup, had brown recluses in my bathroom a couple months ago actually, woke up one morning with a small red bug bite on the back of my knee that MIGHT have been from one, but it went away after a couple days and didn’t get any worse than a small dark red circle lol
Yeah the couple of cases that I know of where the spider was verified as a reclusive some kind, the necrotic tissue was small and just kind of annoying. Every absolutely horrific case has come from one where nobody even saw the spider and it was just because the doctor told them it was from a spider. When antibiotic resistant bacteria started causing flesh wounds that didn't respond to antibiotics doctors started to assume that that meant it must be from the venom of a bite and never even considered that the bacteria could be resistant to the antibiotic. Now antibiotic resistant bacteria causing necrosis is so incredibly common it's ridiculous that there's still people out there who are making that confusion and of course anytime you have the skin broken You're at risk of having one of those infections happen regardless of how the skin broke but I'm sure having a tiny necrotic spot provides fuel for a larger fire.
Hey Travis, I've had probably the worst day of my entire career; everyone yelled at me for no reason, but such is life- this is where I came as soon as I got home, this was my relaxation of choice. Thank you so much for your videos man, I just wanted to share with you that your videos are more than just videos for some people. Keep up the awesome work and thanks for all you do!
- Charlotte
My recluse story: In 2000 I bought 2 story house with attached garage in a small rural town in the southern tip of Illinois. That summer we put vinyl siding on the entire house and garage. Because my wife was a terrible driver and I am lazy, I stored all the extra siding on the floor of the unused space in the garage. The next spring we started seeing Brown Recluse all over the house. They would hang out on the walls, climb across your legs while watching tv etc. We had the house sprayed, but it didn't help much. Then one day I went out to the garage to grab an piece of siding to repair a damaged piece on the house. It was then I found the problem. As I picked up the siding, I revealed hundreds of them. Possibly thousands. And yes, I am certain. At the time I had a bit of arachnophobia and had researched them thoroughly, the info in this video was known to me then. Subsequently, a 30 minute job of removing the siding from the garage took me 4 and half hours filled with skin crawling terror. Another round of spraying and the problem was solved along with my arachnophobia. Just in time for the arrival of a baby and to prevent my wife from divorcing me. I can attest to their non-aggression. Even with the dozens and dozens of encounters, no one was bitten to my knowledge. Edit: 23 years later I still vigorously shake out my towel before drying after a shower and tap out shoes I haven't worn for more than a day. LOL.
Honestly, if you live anywhere with potentially dangerous small animals, knocking out boots and double checking clothing/towels/bedding should just be habit. Of course, with that being said, I know plenty of people don't have the mind to check both ways at crossings, so there's only so much to expect.
I would have left the house and never gone back.
Glad you were able to solve the problem! That's IPM right there, finding what conditions are making your house good habitat for them, and fixing that problem. Nicely done, and glad you got through it okay!
Honestly a heartwarming story. Sounds like she got the best kind of man. Willing to overcome his fears and solve a problem. ❤
Here in Southern IL, I have noticed that if you start seeing Wolf Spiders, they are there because you have plenty of Brown Recluse on sight. Recluse & Sipders in general, do not "Groom Themselves" and that makes it hard to eradicate them by spraying, unless you can spray them directly.
But They Are Good Eating..., but It Takes THOUSANDS To Make A Sandwich..... 😂🤣😂
I love that one of the bonuses of patreon is to watch a scientist nudge around a spider for five minutes.
😂😂😂
Ha! I mean, who WOULDN'T want to see that, right?
I refuse to make my mind up about these spiders until I see a cheese test, dammit.
Only through belligerent cheese can we achieve true science!
My fingers weren't enough? 🙃
Lolololol🤣🤣🤣
@@allbugsgotokevin Maybe if they'd been covered in cheeto dust?
@@allbugsgotokevinCheese test! Cheese test! Cheese test!
Really good point about people advertising spider bites as a kind of badge of courage or pride lol. It’s a weird thing we humans do but I’ve totally noticed it with friends and colleagues. “Got this gnarly painful bump, I think a spider bit me!”
I was listening to this video at work when a little jumping spider crawled onto my desk. Had it been a year prior I would've panicked and squashed it, but thanks to your series I have gained an appreciation for the little guys. Thanks for all that you do!
I can't imagine why people kill jumpers they are just happy lil guys
Jumping spiders are my favorite. They are so smart and curious. Not to mention all the cool abilities they have.
That opening jingle… I always look so forward to it
Thanks, I'm glad you like it!
34:00 be super careful about firewood because there are much scarier insects than spiders… TERMITES!
And emerald ash borers.
Woodlouse Spiders feed on Termites.
and earwigs.
Snakes and rodents too.
Scorpions
An hour and 20 minute video explaining everything we know about Loxosceles reclusa... this may be one of the greatest videos ever published to this platform.
Grab the wife, grab the kids, grab some popcorn, and grab a drink. This is one to enjoy.
Thanks so much, I hope you enjoyed it!
Truth! I wasn't sure about the 1:20, but super engaging and entertaining, time eased by. (Unlike Dune part 1 for people who hadn't read the book 😸).
Top tier content (about spiders!) that rivals PBS or BBC. 💜🕷️
Actually, I shared this video with my sister after about 15 minutes. We're living in Red Zone Texas but were born/raised in Chicago. Down here 17 or so years now. YT algorithm sent me here, and I am happy about it! I know I have seen black widows but now think I've seen a true recluse maybe once (twice?) since coming down. THANK YOU for the interesting/informative video with a touch of humor; my blood pressure appreciates it 😉
Parsons love honey lord lord loves the church church together with lord gettingmarrid Nazarene church
I live in west Texas and I was bit by a brown recluse. I went into my shed to pull out a drawer I had stored in there. I didn’t even know I was bit on my left forearm until later on that night. It progressively started getting worse and spread up & down my arm. That morning I went to a public clinic. The nurse (who had 6 or 7 letters behind her name) that identified the bite. She indicated that she had seen it before. She numbed it and cut a triangle notch out of my arm where the bite was and shoved gauss into the hole in my arm. She did this several times. She loaded me up on antibiotics for a couple of months. She advised me to keep my arm above my heart as much as possible. At one point my arm (from the tip of my finger to the middle of my forearm) swoll up and turned a glassy peach color but thankfully it didn’t do any long term damage.
I almost lost a leg due to these when I moved to the southern US. I thought nothing of them, they didn't hurt or seem like anything. Then my leg turned black and lost 25% of the muscle in the hospital.
This is so true. My first bite was in 1970 on my thigh above the knee. I could feel the bite sharply for almost half an hour and jumped in the tub to scrub it (probably not the greatest idea). Took forever to heal. My second bite was on the same leg above the ankle. Turned black in a dime size area. Itched rather than hurt and I treated it with essential oils. (Second bite was 35 years later)
😬😬 I'm sorry you both experienced that. I'm not a fan of Any spider really....they creep me out! But man these are especially scary they can do so much damage to a human. I hope you guys have healed 🙏💞🙏
@@russianaloha4576Thanks! Healed OK after 2nd bite but have a little dent where the muscle died. Funny; this video erased any lingering fear I had of them!
Sounds more like a bacterial infection. MRSA and flesh eating bacterias are a lot more common than brown recluses.
@@pendlera2959 Recluse bites can cause both
1 hour 20 minutes. I LOVE the direction this channel is taking in terms of providing long form content.
A sincere THANK YOU for not adhering to the shallow and shortsighted TH-cam "wisdom" of making shorter content.
What do you mean "wisdom"? Its the algorithm that pushes it because people have ahort attention spans and it gets more engagement
You're most welcome, and thanks for sticking it out! I don't want all my videos to be this long (took me two months to make this one), but I do enjoy the deep dives, and this species deserved the time spent, in my opinion.
So, I actually let a bunch of False Widows build wherever they want in my house and moved egg sacks around to help them spread. I noticed how efficient they were at cleaning up flying insects and that they stayed put. (Things I also learned from your videos). After a year of this strategy of just letting the false widows have the baseboards, I stopped seeing ANY Brown Recluse in the house. I used to see them often and I have plenty little openings here. The floor around my bed has many false widows and they stop a lot of bugs. They also collect the bodies of their dead together in a little silk wrapped bundles which make it easy to clean up after them! I live in the Nashville Tn area. I have other spiders I let live and encourage them to stay out of my active areas by shewing them off. The competition I've encouraged really seems to have helped. I do have spiders around my floor which might creep some out but I understand they pose me no danger so they get to stay and be helpful! Thanks for the work!
You're most welcome, and it's cool that you've got biocontrol going on there!
Hey Travis! Man I was so excited when I saw you uploaded! This was an incredible video! In my 1.5 years in pest control in central New Jersey, I've seen a total of 3 brown recluse, and all 3 were very old and on glueboards in the basement of a single home where the husband had moved from Texas and had many cardboard boxes stored in the basement. We heavily monitored the house for months and found no additional activity, so I can absolutely concur that they did not establish a breeding population and seemed to just die out. Absolutely love Kevin; I really fail to understand how IPM isn't the standard across pest control companies. I focused on IPM before I even learned what it was out of just... common sense. My company also focuses on it but I definitely take it to an extreme, exhausting all possible options before resorting to pesticide usage. 1:10:58 and 1:13:51 are easily my favourite moments in the entirety of TH-cam, because same. Love this video so much! Keep up the awesome work Travis!
- Charlotte
Thanks for the kind comment. I hope to affect change toward more consistent usage of IPM strategies in the industry as I move forward in my career.
@@allbugsgotokevin Oh hey Kevin! This is also definitely something I strive for as well. I just passed my Core and 7A and am currently studying for my 13 and 7B, so I will be learning more about IPM as it relates to schools in the coming months. Keep up the awesome work, my brother in pest control!
@@LadyKakizaki I do my share of schools for sure.
Thanks Charlotte, and I'm glad you enjoyed it! I couldn't have made this video without Kevin's contributions - most of the photos in it are his, and of course his demonstrations were crucial.
@@travismcenery2919 I so appreciate you asking. It was a lot of fun! I can't imagine how many hours you put into this. It's so well done. I'm honored to be a part.
Fantastic video. I'm a pest control technician, and I don't have brown recluse in my area, but the general public always seems to think so.
Another thing I want to say, is that I was bitten by a brown recluse in my house in SW Ohio in the early 2000's. I picked up a pair of shorts that were folded on a chair, (not on the floor) & put them on. I felt a horrible sharp pain at the top left of my right knee & immediately pushed the shorts down & off. I never saw it. The pain was overcome by the most intense itching I've ever felt in my life. My knee was swelling in front of my eyes, it was unreal. It swelled to the size of a grapefruit or softball. My knee turned many shades of blues, greens, purples & last, black over the course of a few months. I showed my daughter a few weeks later & she wanted me to go to the hospital. I never did but now, 20 years later, I wish I had, just to get it documented. I also wish I'd taken pictures. I've been bitten by other spiders, stung by a bumble bee, yellow jacket & a wasp, but those hurt for a couple minutes to an hour. I've never experienced anything like this before. I've always been tall, lanky & athletic. I used to find the small, thin, round pancake like egg sacks on my basement windows, outside & inside, usually on the North side of the house. There were tall, old Yew bushes close up to the house. I found a small dead brown recluse in the basement once, on the floor in front of the washer & dryer. You might question if I misidentified the spider, but I've always been interested in bugs, spiders, bees, etc & am confident.
Just casually singing "doesn't even have a butt - not loxosceles!" as I point at random objects in my office today :)
This video was amazing, informative, and as always reassuring to someone like me, still working on getting over the willies whenever I see spiders. Your excitement for spiders is contagious, I love hearing you talk about them with such admiration and respect, thank you!
32:55 “I’ve lived where cougars hung around the elementary school watching for stragglers.” Just caught me completely off guard
It's true though. I'm honestly not making that up.
his unassuming humor is so good, caught me off guard too, but it's right on target - points out the oversight of the school system and city officisls. If the school areas are being scouted by child killing animals, where's the guardians that are looking out for the kids?????????????
@@wa13601 If the animals are scouting but not making any attacks, sounds like the officials are doing enough to protect the kids. Part of protecting kids is taking extra precautions when a predator is known to be near. Killing or relocating the predator is not the only solution, and often doesn't work very well anyway.
Really clear and helpful to my report,thank you!
Wow, thank you so much for the support! I really appreciate it, and it really helps keep the channel going. I'm glad it was clear and helpful, and good luck! Thank you!
Awesome video! When the "Not Loxosceles" song came on, I felt certain that the video would be ending soon (I hadn't looked at the length before clicking). Was totally surprised and delighted to learn that you'd put that gem in such an inconspicuous place in the video. Overall, super entertaining and educational. Thanks for the work that you do!
I hope this video helps diminish the amount of idiots online claiming every even romotely brown spider is a recluse
Same here lmao…
Well, that's one of the goals. ;)
Pathologist here - in the NE there are millions of Cheiracanthium mildei. Can't tell ya how many C. m. bites were mistakenly attributed to recluse spiders - which we do not have around here. C. mildei can give a fairly bad bite for same reason as a recluses bite - they get in your bed and you roll over on them. Like recluses, Cheiracanthium is itinerant. Rarely sits in a web (which, btw, when it does, it builds it in a corner between the ceiling and the wall - looks like a little cocoon). It does look a lot like a recluse, and its venom can cause necrosis like a recluse but there's usually too little of it.
@@mikezylstra7514 I did a video on C. mildei - the research and evidence actually suggests that their venom doesn't cause necrosis. That belief traced back to a single paper from 1970, in which none of the five subject patients with necrotic lesions actually saw a spider bite them. But the paper got cited as established fact (despite the authors saying the evidence was circumstantial). Check out the video if you like, and all the papers I cited are in the description, I think.
@@travismcenery2919 I don't see how the yellow sac spider, an actual yellow spider, can be confused with the brown recluse, the shape of the spider isn't even that similar and they are uh, yellow. Not to mention they have no fiddle mark and aren't even brown. Yellow sac spiders being misidentified as a brown recluse can be prevented by literally 2 seconds of research and I don't know how ppl mix them up
You should post the recluse identification song as its own video. You know. For quick reference/easy replay-ability to commit the lyrics to memory.
I'm looking for a way to do something like this without the negative effects that really short videos can have on a long-form channel. If I release it somewhere I'll say so in the community tab!
I just released it as it's own video. I'm blow away at how many people have requested that.
th-cam.com/video/-X2QS2DBuKY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=2ZoqnpeoxEaklv2b
@@travismcenery2919 Woohoo! Thanks, man!
That crochet spider plushie is adorable omg 🥺♥️
My friend and admin in All Bugs Go to Kevin, Christina, made it.
Thank you! ❤️
@@shedrivesmecrafty Do you make the spider plushies?
@@amicaaranearumI do! I don’t sell online anymore but I made the one in the video ❤️
@@shedrivesmecraftysuch a shame you don’t sell anymore! Would love to have one of those. Any reason you stopped selling them?
My late husband was bitten by something when he was stationed at Ft. Carson Colorado and after not feeling well with the bite becoming swollen and bright red lines running from the bite area up his arm. I took him to the hospital on base and the Doctors had no idea what was causing the reaction he was having. They came to the conclusion he'd been bitten by a Brown Recluse spider, but I was sceptical. For one thing they said he probably got bit when he was sleeping. I told them that I'd never seen a single spider in our apartment having lived there for over a year. In the end they gave him an injection of something they said might help along with antibiotics. That bite left a quarter sized hole that left a scar he had for the rest of his life. Thanks for this information and now I'm sure I was right about it not being a Brown Recluse, I'll never know what the cause of his bite was.
"this was the spider in question" fucking killed me 😭
This is one of the few longer TH-cam videos I've watched from beginning to end. This was a fascinating introduction to one of nature's most misunderstood and maligned creatures. Thank you for all the care and effort you put into it.
Glad you enjoyed it!
"Accepts fate, dies" -some poor harvestman
How I feel about most things 😆
Excellent video, not just repeated and plagiarized crap, but actual good in-depth information. I learned quite a but from this one, as I have from all of your videos.
Your videos aren't just background noise, I wait until I can relax, watch and learn. Thank you very much!
Thanks so much! I'm glad they're actually helpful.
I love your channel. No padding, no clickbait. Informative and straight to the point. Keep up the good work :)
Thanks so much, I appreciate it, and I'm glad you're enjoying it!
Excellent video as always and so worth the wait! I was thrilled to see Kevin involved in this one. The identification song made me lol and I would love a time stamp in the description for it. (Or even better - a short of the song by itself for my friends that wont be bothered to watch a full spider video 😊) Excited to see what your next video is about! ❤
Thank you so much for the support! I appreciate it! I'm still working out the best way to release the song but I'll announce it on the community tab when I do.
Here's the link to the song as it's own separate video:
th-cam.com/video/-X2QS2DBuKY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=2ZoqnpeoxEaklv2b
@@travismcenery2919 YES!
Thanks! Great video, very informative and beneficial..
Thank you so much for the support! I appreciate it a lot!
These have been my favorite videos on TH-cam since you’ve started, thank you so much for all the effort and care put into the subject! Was always told by multiple people that the two spiders to worry about here in Colorado were Black Widows and Brown Recluse, but as you’ve said we don’t really have any Brown Recluse spiders. There’s something very interesting in how we’re inclined to mythologize these little creatures into something so very larger than life, to the point they have a ‘phantom’ range that spreads well beyond their habitat. Fascinating video and great work as always!
Thanks so much! And yup, it's a funny thing that people do. I think we have a fascination with what we perceive as strange and dangerous.
@@travismcenery2919I’ve been bitten by them a few times.
I work in the pest control industry in Missouri. Brown recluse infestations are extremely common here. It is likely impossible to fully exterminate them. But that's okay because in houses with recluses I don't see many other spiders or insects. Chemical insecticides can reduce their numbers, but I would recommend using glue traps under furniture and in closets, and especially in furnace rooms, storage rooms, and other rooms that aren't occupied (they're smart enough to avoid people for the most part.) The point is to reduce their populations in a home so they're not a nuisance but to leave enough that they can still be beneficial. Personally I'd rather have brown recluse that I don't see often than, say, roaches that I can see.
Truth! Roaches....now that's an insect that'll make me scream.✌️😎🕷️
Brown Recluses feed on Packrat Insects like Silverfish and Firebrats. People with Clutter are more than likely going to have Brown Recluse infestation.
I can definitely appreciate this approach. I mean I generally hate killing spiders at all, but I get that in extreme cases, there isn't much choice. But they're great pest control.
I had them and wolf spiders all at the same time even one of those weird louse hunter spiders (i'm also in missouri) and other spiders eat recluses too
The problem with glue traps is that they kill reptiles, which are much more precious in terms of actual numbers and are vertebrates that can suffer.
An hour and 20 minutes goes by so fast with this channel. I could listen to you talk about spiders for ten hours straight and not get bored, probably. It also very very much helps that I get to occasionally watch someone piss off a spider for science. And your humor!!! Entertaining, hilarious, educational, nerdy as fuck. I take every chance I can get to share niche and extremely specific spider facts I learned from this channel.
These videos are just a perfect blend of fun, quirky, interesting, surprising and a total geekfest. You nail it.
I LOVED the time I've spent here tonight, almost 3 hours. I watched ALL of your video and then read about 1000 comments. I agree with every good thing said about your channel and I subscribed. This was just so well presented, and best of all so ENTERTAINING. (I know I'm shouting) I have been bitten and it became necrotic, went to the hospital and they debrided. (sp?) Pretty sure it was a BR but who knows. The main point of my comment is to express admiration and appreciation for your channel!! I just loved the humor of it too. Presenting the facts as just facts was great. And showing the references!... Exceptional. And you showed enough clips in different positions that I am now CERTAIN that I can identify a BR. And living in Tennessee, this is helpful! Also thanks to your many commenters! I laughed a lot at some of the stories. I watch LOTS of youtube videos and I think that the folks here commented with more content than any other channel I've watched. Spider folks are SMART! haha.♥
I lived in CA up through high school and the fear of the brown recluse was very real. I never saw one and I was very active in the boy scouting program. I am honestly not surprised CA had so many bad submissions.
great video!
I think about the southern half of CA is home to the desert recluse, Loxosceles deserta, so there IS a recluse species there. Also, in Los Angeles county, there are a few buildings that have populations of Loxosceles laeta, the Chilean recluse, which actually has an even more potent bite, but those are isolated populations in a handful of commercial buildings.
Another Californian here, we've definitely have the fear of the brown recluse. Maybe it comes from the Okies who likely brought a few, which likely didn't survive. Such chill creatures, undeserving of their bad reputation.
Btw I love the song, and I'm never going to forget "recleese."🕷️✌️😎
That heart clip was wicked.
That was a fun video to put together.
I know, right? I was amazed when I saw it, and I'm very thankful that Kevin let me use it.
Squishing a spider stops a beating heart!
Guess I'm not just a heart breaker but a heart crusher then...
The Songs!!! Were Amazing!!! The entire video was suffused with respect and kindness towards our spidery friends, especially needed and appreciated on this maligned group. Cheese test unneeded: they'd likely simply run away. Big kudos toward your horizontal gene transfer animations. Going to start saying Recleese btw.
Thank you so much!
I once knew a young man who lost over half of his calf to the brown recluse spider. (He was obese and had a lot of fat in that area). He was working on clearing out a woodpile in a warehouse…Missouri. Perfect habitat. Anyway, his tissue started to rot, and had to be removed. Left a large hole in his leg.
I'm from Missouri. I had one bite me an the back of my forearm three to four inches from my elbow several, or rather numerous years ago. It started out as a small red bump that eventually ended up being as big as a half dollar. The center of the bite turned yellow and rotted away or fell out. (It looked exactly like the image of the ankle on the Bing search, "Brown Recluse bite.") It eventually healed up leaving a dent in my arm. To this day I still have that dent in my arm from the bite.
Ridiculously in depth! Fantastic video man! You can see every bit of hard work that went into this one. Great job!
Thanks, Jack! Couldn't have done it without your help, so thank you for being a part of it.
I'm in rural Missouri and am pretty familiar with brown recluse, and I've only been bitten once. It was a nonissue because I knew what spider it was, was able to capture it alive (but a bit roughed up) to verify its identity, and sought appropriate medical attention.
It was an ideal situation if you're going to be bitten by a recluse, and now I have a realistic perception on them as a species that I just have to live with. When I was younger, I was extremely anxious about them and mistook every similar spider for one, and reacted as expected. 😂
When I was finally bitten and had the fellow in a clear container, I became intimately familiar with the species due to tons of panicked research to make SURE it was a brown recluse before I made a fool of myself! I'll never misidentify another spider as one again, at least.
Anyway, I cultivate an introduced wolf spider population to help manage my recluse population, and I believe it has shown improvement. Many folks around my area swear by it.
I haven't read anything about wolf spiders as biocontrol, but it seems sound, with wolfies being a ground active hunter, and likely to encounter the recluse. Not sure how often the wolfie would come out on top, I've never seen data on that. It would be interesting to observe.
@@travismcenery2919 I don't expect them to compete directly; I just want them to outnumber the recluse population so that they crowd them out by eliminating their resources and taking over their niche. Basically, moving in some unruly wolf spider neighbors that steal all the recluses' food until they decide to move on to greener pastures. 😂
identification song goes hard as hell let bro cook
So glad you liked it, I had a lot of fun writing and recording it!
10-hour remix when?!
hi evs
@@bruhbenton hi benton
🔥
Thanks for another great video. As an Australian I love to understand the insects in our environment and seeing the spiders elsewhere in the world is great.
The last place I lived I had an unattached garage filled with Brown recluses. They even would eat each other. I cleaned out the whole garage hosed it down with water let it dry and then sprayed it with bug spray. The purge got them under control but never rid them completely. But I was never bitten. This was in a suburb of St.Louis Missouri. In Missouri you see them so often that it's very easy to know the difference. They even act differently than other spiders in the way they run.
Great video. I've been following Kevin on Facebook for quite some time now and that's where I found the link to your video. Spiders fascinate me and always have. I know a lot of people who think every kind of brown spider they see has to be a recluse. I am 70 years old and have lived in Texas the majority of my life. I've never actually seen a brown recluse although they've probably been in and around every place I've lived in this state. Proving that their common name of recluse is well deserved.
Yup, they tend to avoid us. And Kevin's great!
Screamed YES out loud when Missouri came #1. Knew we were good at something haha
This is absolutely top tier content. Very informative, well put together and narrated - and hilarious! 😂
Your videos deserve A LOT of attention. Thanks!
Thank you very much.
Thanks!
Thank you so much for the support! This really means a lot. I appreciate it, and glad you're enjoying the channel!
I never knew I needed all of this info about the Brown Recluse. I’m so glad I watched this video. I live in north central SC, and almost exactly one year ago I found a brown recluse in my bathroom. I was 100% positive, but I didn’t check its eyes. I even took a picture of it and many on Facebook agreed it was definitely a Brown Recluse. Now I’m not so sure. And the best thing about this video is, I’m no longer as afraid of getting bit by a recluse as I was. I’m not scared of spiders although I can’t let a tarantula walk up my arm. I tried and I can’t do it. All of the house spiders get free range in my house. They trap fruit flies and other annoying pests, and they’re not hard to clean up after they’re gone. I will trap and relocate Wolf Spiders outside though. I was bit by one 20 years ago and it hurt enough to give them eviction notices whenever they’re skulking around in the house. Great video. Videos like this are what TH-cam was made for!
Almost an hour and a half? On a single spider?
Sign me up!!
I love this channel! The song was perfect. "Doesn't even have a butt, not Loxosceles!" 😂😂
Glad you liked the song. Due to several requests, I've released it as it's own video, if you're interested.
th-cam.com/video/-X2QS2DBuKY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=2ZoqnpeoxEaklv2b
This video brought me to your channel. From this video alone I can tell you're very knowledgeable about spiders and quite engaging. I enjoy your content and hope to see this channel grow!
I'm glad you found this video enjoyable. I hope you enjoy my other videos as much.
I got bit four days ago in my sleep on my stomach, I had clutter around the bed , old boxes full of Arrowheads, people this was the most painful experience, it messed up my vision and blood pressure, I felt poisoned.
After three days I had to get a shot of antibiotic. This is day 5 and thankfully I have no rotten tissue. I’m paranoid and now have ptsd from this experience. I’m bombing my house tomorrow and I’m constantly looking for these spiders. Please keep your house clean and no clutter!
I'm going to spend today picking up everything on the floor including my cat's cardboard boxes. I spray Home Defense inside my house along where the floors meet the walls hoping if I kill all insects, spiders will have nothing to eat. I will have nightmares about your story.
I found your channel today and have been listening to wonderful spider facts all day at work. Thanks for your fantastic work! ❤
This video will singlehandedly save hundreds if not thousands of lives. Spider lives. Since humans were never really in much danger from these spiders anyways.
I really hope genuinely that these videos help people not kill spiders 🕷️
@@LydiAtheistLadyI’ve been bitten by Brown Recluses several times in 2016 and 2017. But I’ve never really bothered to kill one. Because: 1 The bites were very slightly annoying and completely non lethal and non necrotic, and 2. I had Firebrats and Silverfish which are both the BR’s Favorite Food.
As long as you don’t have clutter and as long as you don’t have Silverfish and Firebrats, you generally won’t see a Brown Recluse.
Doubt it. When it comes to spiders, most people take the "shoot first, ask questions later" route. Over the course of an 8 week rotation I had 2 women come in claiming their kid was bitten by a brown recluse and another one who insisted it was black widow. Trying to tell them we don't have those in Northern MN was useless. Although I can see why some may mistake a nursery web or fishing spider for a brown recluse.
This is unfortunately VERY true.
That's the hope. While I definitely wouldn't say these spiders pose no danger at all, it's definitely overstated.
We have a recluse-like local spider in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. I was convinced it was a recluse for all that I could see from 1+ meters away. When I caught one and put it in a jar, the eyes proved it was not a recluse. I hope my analysis was correct because every picture you show, sans the eyes, is a perfect match for what we have, and we have a lot of them. One morning I was taking a shower, still trying to wake up, and I turned to rinse the soap out of my eyes, and at eye level, just to my left, was one of the local look-alikes. They are pretty big. It was so mellow, just hung there. So I finished my shower, got out, and left it. Came back in an hour and it was gone. Now and then I see one scramble across the floor, or find them caught in a sticky trap in the basement. The good news is that they've never fallen on me, never jumped at me, never chased me down the hall. Whatever they are, they stay very cool, and so I've learned to not even bother them.
If you're ever uncertain, citizen science websites like iNaturalist (international) or BugGuide (North America) may prove helpful.
I wonder if that is perhaps the Titiotus species? They only occur in California and very little is known about them, and they can be a very close lookalike. But as you say, the eye pattern rules out recluse.
I looked at google images, and although it might be the Titiotus, it seems the sternum is a little too broad in the google images compared to the fellow I see around the house. Next time I have a close-encounter I'll snap a photo. @@travismcenery2919
@donaldwycoff4154 I grew up in the Santa Cruz Mtn’s. Ben Lomand & Boulder creek - we had LOTS of brown recluses and some other huge furry ones - they were in closets, beds, inside sheets, all the corners of the house, wood, etc. My aunt was bitten on her face while sleeping - took 6 months to heal, left a large while spot on her face. So very scary in the bed.
We also have something that looks very much like a recluse here in San Luis Obispo County California but I never checked the eyes. They are always very timid and they hang out on the floor and walls. We are moving out of a house that is full of them (for unrelated reasons) and we all had a major fear of them so I will check those eyes to hopefully better identify the species. It would be such a relief to find out these are a harmless spider. They sure look like a recluse but I never got close enough to check the eyes because of my fear of being bitten. We also have grass spiders and cellar spiders so it would be great to learn they are similarly harmless. Last few years we have invasive brown widows and my infant is crawling so we are cautious about spiders. I will keep an eye out for dark urine and that "bad kidney smell." Thank you so much!
Travis, this was a great video. I think it covered everything a layman should want to know about the Brown Recluse. I wrote a while back about when I worked in a female prison and there were cases of "necrotizing spider bites" The medical doctor documented this. And successfully treated these cases with antibiotics. I searched around and found no spiders, let alone any Recluses. Also, we were north of the spiders range in Illinois. I reasoned that these were cases of MRSA caused by leaning in the unsterile walls of the shower. All of these areas were on the upper arm, the butt, and hip. Again, Travis, this was a very informative video. Thanks. John
Glad it was helpful! And yeah, prisons were one of the settings in which MRSA was particularly rampant. And spiders got blamed for it.
I’ve had this in my watch later waiting for me to get ready to dive into the world of spiders. Finally decided to actually watch it & I’m so glad i did! A great comprehensive and informative video, with some humor in the right places. Time to watch all of your other videos!
I stumbled upon this video completely accidentally, and I couldn't be happier.
I love video essays but I've never looked for any on spiders or animals in general, and finding this essay which so scientific, interesting and fun at the same time (the songs were so cute my wife had tears in her eyes) is like winning a lottery.
Amazing content Travis, im arachnophobic but I still watched the whole thing breath-taken. Thank you so much.
this channel is such a hidden gem, thank you so much for all the engaging and witty content about creatures many people at best take for granted
Thanks so much, I appreciate it! Glad you're enjoying the channel.
One of the few people I always give a thumbs up to before I even watch the video....
I appreciate that, it helps out!
Your videos have really helped me start overcoming my arachnophobia! I've even got to the point where I can hold one up to the size of a quarter and be chill with it! I haven't been bit even when I pick them up and now I find them pretty cute. I make sure to only hold the safe ones though, jumping spiders are my favorites and I used to be terrified of them! Thank you for making these videos and educating people!
If you can handle spiders.
You never had arachnophobia
@@fastinradfordable considering that i used to hyperventilate and be unable to sleep if I found one in my room, even if I had someone else kill it. I'd say yeah, I had arachnophobia it took me a long time to get to where I am now.
Jumping spiders are adorable! And it's great to hear that you've been able to move past your fear. I'm glad I've been able to help.
@@fastinradfordableI'd agree, but there are also levels of phobia. Jumping spiders are perfectly fine to me, but anything with long legs is an instant nope. Phobias aren't really rational.
Thanks Travis! I learned more about this spider than I have ever known. Firstly, I live in MD, and even though I've never seen one, I've had countless people tell me they are in our state. Good thing I take hearsay with a grain of salt. Gonna subscribe and check out some more of your stuff in the future. Very informative and you have a way of drawing me in. Keep up the great work, man.
Loved your video. Who knew I would be so entertained by a spider video? You! That's who. Great job and fabulous humor. Thank you for one of my evening's bright spots. I have a small life 😂😂😂
"It's a nice country." "No." 😂 I was wheezing! Recleese and that song? Love it. Spider info has right to be this funny. Omg, I hadn't seen the Kansas bit! Legit woke my dad up across the house from cackling like a crazy person.
Thanks so much, I'm glad you enjoyed the video! Say sorry to your dad for me, though. ;)
Oh, it was fine. He stirred a little but went right back to sleep with no memories of said event, but thank you regardless! 😊
The Brown Recluse effect.
“You shouldn’t keep a Doberman as a pet they are extremely dangerous?”
“Why…? How…?”
“Well my uncle once had a Doberman and he kicked the shit out of it repeatedly and then it attacked him and bit him, so therefore Dobermans are extremely dangerous”
This is actually pretty on the mark.
Scientific curiosity and a BURNING, working desire to know, and share the journey. I friggin love it!!! 😮😊
I'm so glad you're enjoying the channel, and thanks so much!
Always really appreciate your takes on spiders, especially covering such an infamous spider that's gotten a lot of grief over the years. You do a great job giving these animals respect on accounts of being fascinating and still potentially dangerous. Thanks for working towards dispelling myths about these guys!
I really loved this video and I'm so happy you did justice to the brown (and other) recluse spiders. I usually watch your videos the second I see you've uploaded a new one. This one is pretty long, though, and I have been waiting for a day when I finally had enough time to watch all the way through in one sitting. It was well worth the wait, though I will have the "It's Not Loxosceles" song (13:27) stuck in my head for days. 🕷 👍🏻🕷
I want to give this more likes, If only for the "burning down the house" bit.
Glad you enjoyed it, that part was kinda fun to shoot. ;)
My childhood home had an infestation of Desert Recluse. We let a couple local lizards go inside the house one summer. Apart from being a joy to see hanging around the house, they actually did remove all of our spiders. We never had a problem with them again. Let the lizards go back outside at the end of summer.
Oh. In the summer here in Oregon my cat brings lizards in all day and it's hard to catch them and take them outside. Maybe I'll let them stay. They are adorable.
How dare you barge into my bathroom while I'm at my most vulnerable and force me to listen to a dissertation about spiders. The nerve.
Entering your home then barging into your bathroom, while you were "vulnerable", was not the primary issue - curious. 😂
@@Sowhat-u6f if a man has something to say, I wanna hear them out before chastising
Thanks for that comprehensive, even-handed showing of that spider I've often wondered about. Always been a bit wary of biting this-and-thats, and when I first moved to the Dallas area, the first thing I did was put some of those cardboard file boxes into an outdoor storage for about a year, then brought a couple of them them back into a little place I got, and I'm pretty sure that storage place had been loaded down with them, and I got a few. (Didn't have the advantage of your nice ID tips, but one guy who seemed knowledgeable had shown me one at work.) When I went back to check my other boxes, saw they were loaded with very reclusey looking spiders, which (unfortunately) got liberally sprayed. (Think it was kind of like what you described in that tree or that house (or one mythical prison?) - when they find a place they like, they really pile on!) Have moved ~70 miles away from that area and no more such sitings. Still worry about them at times, but much less so now! Interesting about your "politeness" index. I and the gal I first came out here to meet both felt that jumping spiders appear to be highly sociable (actually) though likely it is some kind of chemical attraction. Anyway, hope to see more of yours in the future.
A friend of mine almost lost the lower part of his leg from a brown recluse bite. Had a hole the size of a quarter that almost hit his bone. Had it gone any further, doctors said they would cut his leg off at the knee. All from a single bite just above his ankle.
Seriously my home girl same thing but upper leg they were talking bout taking her leg at the hip soooo crazy.
Certified spider.
I was bitten by a brown recluse a few years ago, totally my own fault! We were in the process of moving and had cardboard boxes everywhere. I laid on the floor on a pile of broken down boxes. Recluse thought it was going to be crushed so it tagged the back of my calf real good! At first it was a horrible stinging pain, the next day it was swollen and so so tender! I couldn’t handle even my clothing touching it! Another day or two it opened up and was a nasty open wound, it looked like pus inside but would not come out at all! It took a few weeks to heal, I still have dime sized scar from it.
Yeah, that can definitely happen with these bites. Just because it won't kill you doesn't mean it won't supremely suck. Sorry you experienced that!
That's about the experience that I've heard from everyone I know who has a verified bite. A dime of annoyingness and grossness
I spent three and a half months in the hospital fighting necrotizing fachitis I had been bitten by a brown recluse repeatedly in my sleep I got really lucky.
I got bit by a Brown Recluse when I was a cable tech, I was in a crawl space in a house built in the 1930s. I was lucky enough to catch the damn thing in a bag so it was positivity identified. When I went to the hospital it wasn’t to rough, however, it left a weird scar on my hand and my thumb has had this weird tingle in it ever since.
This is brilliant! You and your humor are brilliant!
So I’m watching this at 1am, probably gonna watch it again with my bf. I’ve yet to introduce your channel to him, but typically he ends up liking the things I like. I got him stuck on Snake Discovery, Clint’s Reptiles and Ants Canada, so I could see him liking your channel too. I’m still terrified of spiders unfortunately, but I think I could get over it to some extent. I love informative channels. Info channels are so important to helping people get over fear.
One time my cousins brothers girlfriends uncles dogs babysitter was moving some boxes and a brown recluse ran out and she bit one of its legs off and then the rest of the spider just rotted away. True story.
Believable, actually.
poor spider!
YEAH ? WELL MY NA NAS ! FRIENDS BABY DADDYS ? MOTHERS SECOND HUSBANDS HOMEBOYZ ? AND YADA YADA ? YADA
Don’t downplay the bite of a brown recluse!!! Do you want to see pictures of my bite? I’ll gladly share!!!
I honestly love that your biggest inconvenience related to your wife's healthcare were the parking fees. I work at a children's hospital in Texas, and many parents here will gladly go bankrupt if it means saving their children. I just wish our citizens didn't have to choose between financial security, and their children's lives.
Yeah, we really shouldn't complain too much. The tradeoff is really long wait times for non-life-threatening stuff. But if it's a life or death emergency, yeah, it's there for us. Hard for us to imagine life without it.
I was bitten on my foot between my toes 15 yrs ago. It swelled all the way up to my knee and it was all a reddish purple in color from being so swollen. I couldn’t walk on it. After 10 days the swelling finally started going down. It was so painful and if I barely touched it, the pain was excruciating. I was fortunate the bite was between my toes, not much muscle/fat for the poison to eat away the tissue, so no damage to my foot.
Hi. Recovering arachnophobe ( Thank you!) and fellow Canadian here. I originally found the channel looking for info on the Parson's Spider. I found one in our apartment, and I thought it was odd to see it indoors. You'll be happy to know I let it hang around. Also, thanks to your common house spider video, I now have several co-existing happily with me. I still can't handle sac spiders, but I'm trying.
This video though, you went hard on this one and it's been wildly entertaining. It still makes me laugh like an idiot even the 6th or 7th time in.
The identification song is the catchiest damn thing. I've been singing it for weeks every time I see our house spiders.
"It's a nice country!"
"No."
Peak Canadian right there. 😂
Thanks for the wonderful sense of humour mixed with such great information. I appreciate the honesty.
Thank you so much for your kind words. I just released the song asnits own video if you are interested:
th-cam.com/video/-X2QS2DBuKY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=2ZoqnpeoxEaklv2b