When they do bite, they don't usually killīlack widows eat insects, as well as other arachnids, that they catch in their webs. Instead, the prodded black widows in the study often ran away, played dead or flicked a few strands of silk at their attackers. In most cases, poking the spider repeatedly with a finger wasn't enough to get the arachnid to bite, the researchers found. In fact, you really have to pinch a western black widow to get it to sink its teeth in, said Scott, who referenced a recent study that found that this species of spider is most likely to bite when it's pinched along the entire length of its body (something that might happen if it is attacked by a predator or sat upon by an unsuspecting human). In other words, the spider likely wasn't just sitting on a grape, ready to pounce at any moment. The Vermont woman recently bitten by a black widow spider lurking among her grapes likely reached her hand directly into the bag and accidentally squished the spider hiding inside, Scott said. "We pose a much greater threat to them than they do to us." "They have no reason to bite us unless they're threatened," Scott said. Who knows, maybe this small step can also help you wash any lingering black widows right down the drain.ĭespite their ferocious-sounding name, black widows are not aggressive creatures, said Scott, adding that a better word to describe these spiders is "shy."
Bananas are another fruit that often harbor stowaway spiders (though the so-called banana spiders that hitch a ride on fruit from Central America are almost always harmless), Blackledge told Live Science.Īs with any kind of produce, you should wash grapes and even bananas in cold, running water before peeling and eating them, according to the U.S. If a spider beats the odds and survives being plucked from its vineyard home, vigorously washed and then packed into a box, there's a chance it could travel all the way to your local grocery store and, eventually, into your home, said Todd Blackledge, a biology professor at the University of Akron in Ohio. And yet, black widows do sometimes end up in people's kitchens.
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