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In A Nutshell
- A house full of recluses. Between June and November 2001, Diane Barger collected 2,055 brown recluse spiders in her family’s 19th-century home in Lenexa, Kansas, according to a study in the Journal of Medical Entomology.
- Hundreds were big enough to bite. The researchers conservatively estimated that at least 400 of the spiders were large enough to envenomate a person. Not one of the four family members was bitten.
- Two other infested homes told the same story. Homes in Missouri and Oklahoma with 45 and 30 recluses also recorded no bites.
- Many “recluse bites” may be something else. The study’s author argues that in states where the spider is rare or absent, a diagnosis of brown recluse bite is unlikely to be correct.
Most people who spot one brown recluse in the house start thinking about moving. The Barger family of Lenexa, Kansas, found more than 2,000 of them in six months, and kept living there.
Their 19th-century limestone home became one of the most cited case studies in spider research. It suggests the brown recluse, one of the most feared spiders in America, bites far less often than its reputation implies, and that many wounds blamed on it probably have another cause.
How Did One Family End Up With 2,055 Spiders?
They counted, trapped and mailed them to a scientist.
At first, the family barely noticed. “We’d see spiders, maybe one a week,” Diane Barger told NPR in 2002, “until the time when we discovered we had a recluse.” She contacted Rick Vetter, a spider expert at the University of California, Riverside, and started collecting.
From June to November 2001, she caught or killed 1,213 recluses by hand, and sticky traps caught another 842, Vetter later wrote. Every specimen was shipped to Riverside so he could confirm it was a brown recluse.
Why Did Nobody Get Bitten?
Brown recluses are shy, and bites appear to be rare.
In the 2002 paper, Vetter and Barger estimated that at least 400 of the spiders were big enough to deliver a venomous bite. Yet nobody in the family of four was bitten. The researchers also collected spiders from two more typical infested homes, one in Missouri and one in Oklahoma, which yielded 45 and 30 recluses. Those families reported no bites either.
As the name suggests, the spider prefers to hide and is mostly active at night. “Spiders get blamed for all kinds of wounds,” Vetter told NPR. Entomologists agree that a recluse can bite, and that the venom can occasionally cause serious skin damage. The Kansas case suggests it simply does not happen as often as fear of the spider would predict.
Are Brown Recluse Bites Being Misdiagnosed?
Often, the research suggests, especially outside the spider’s range.
That was the paper’s main point. If a home with thousands of recluses produced no bites, Vetter argued, then areas where the spider is rare or absent cannot have enough of them to explain the many “recluse bites” diagnosed there. As the study’s abstract puts it, such diagnoses outside the spider’s native range “are unlikely to be correct.”
A UC Riverside summary of the study noted that many skin lesions get labeled as brown recluse bites. Vetter also pointed out that a large survey in Colorado, where doctors had described recluse bites as a seasonal problem, turned up more than 24,000 spiders and not a single recluse.
What Should You Do If You Find One?
Stay calm, and do not assume every wound is a bite.
Experts generally advise that if you live in the spider’s range, mainly the central and southern United States, you shake out shoes and clothes left on the floor and keep bedding off the floor, to avoid pressing a spider against your skin. If you develop a painful or spreading wound, see a doctor, and if possible bring the spider, since only an identified specimen confirms a bite.
The Bargers eventually made peace with their housemates. “We’re not really too worried about them coming out and attacking us now,” Diane Barger told NPR. Two thousand spiders, six months, four people, and not a single bite.
