black Widow (genus Latrodectus) lives up to its name because it does what it promises: it mates with the male and immediately after that eats him. However, she also has a reputation for being a very undeserved ruthless killer. They are generally quiet spiders, biting only when disturbed. Therefore, it is curious that only in the 50s of the last century, 63 people died from it in the United States, of which 80% were men. And of which most were bitten on the penis. Does this black widow sympathize with her human companions by attacking males right in this particular organ?
Quite curious, but the truth is that according to the data collected in the article IFLScience, much less sneaky than it looks. It’s just that these men put their penis in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Come on, let’s go pee in the open-air latrines where some black widow was spinning her web. And, of course, when what should have been something like a snake or a giant worm for her got into her web, she had no choice but to defend herself and get vaccinated. poison. He wasn’t looking for a penis, but he didn’t have a choice.
Venomous black widow
Various types of black widow are known as Floor latrodectus. In particular, this name is given to those who commit sexual cannibalism. That is, after mating is over, they eat the male. Sometimes he manages to escape and can mate again, but usually he gets into the web and serves as food for the spider, and also strengthens his eggs. He sacrifices himself for his offspring, so to speak.
Both the male and the female have glands that secrete poison. However, the male is much less strong, so he does not serve for self-defense. Instead, women’s contain a number neurotoxinsknown as latrotoxins, which very quickly affect the nervous system of their victims, causing death. This is very dangerous for a person. However, today hospitals have the appropriate antidotes, so if you apply in time, death usually does not occur. This, logically, has led to a drop in deaths from black widow bites in recent years. However, in 1950sthe situation was quite different.
Fatal penis bites
Penis bites are especially dangerous. And this is what, as the environmental analyst explained Kelsey Padgett in episode This American life, the skin in this area is less thick. Also, there are a lot of nervestherefore, neurotoxins are much easier to spread throughout the body.
Now, if a man walks in the country, the penis is not an area specially exhibited. How can it be that they have such a fixation on this area of the body? The key, as we have seen, is in the restrooms.
In the past, many homes had toilets outside the building. It made it easier access to insects or arachnidshow black Widow. In addition, this spider is known to love to weave its webs in dark and deep places, reaching down to the ground. It also needs two walls to rotate from one side to the other. So the old latrines were the perfect place. They don’t tend to itch unless touched. If there was a woman sitting in the closet, she would probably not notice the presence of the spider, and the spider would not notice her either. But if a man sits down and drops his penis, eventually the black widow will fight back. Here’s what happened in 50s and for this reason there were so many fatal bites.
As toilets have been built inside homes, these incidents have become less frequent. Also, if we add to this the fact that better treatments are already available in hospitals, we can consider the bite of this arachnid to be something less anxiety. Despite this, she will continue to maintain a reputation as a black widow who, judging by the facts, hates men, regardless of their kind.
Source: Hiper Textual
