3. It’s between 6–20 mm
Typically light to medium brown, range
color: from cream to dark brown
Usually have a violin pattern on its back
of the cephalothorax, with the neck of
the violin pointing to the rear of the
spider, resulting in the nicknames
fiddle back spider, brown fiddler, or
violin spider.
While most spiders have eight eyes,
recluse spiders have six eyes arranged
in pairs (dyads) with one median pair
and two lateral pairs.
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4. Adult brown recluse spiders often lives about one to two years.
Each female produces several egg sacs over a period of two to
three months, from May to July, with approximately fifty eggs in
each sack.
The spiderlings take about one year to grow to adulthood. The
brown recluse spider is resilient and can tolerate up to six
months of extreme drought and scarcity or absence of food.
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5. When is threatened it usually flees, seemingly to avoid a conflict.
The spider doesn’t usually jump unless be touched brusquely, and
even then its avoidance movement is more of a horizontal lunge.
A brown recluse's stance on a flat surface is usually with all legs
radially extended. When alarmed it may lower its body, withdraw
the two front legs backwards in a defensive position, withdraw the
rearmost pair of legs into a position for lunging forward.
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7. Iowa
Ohio
Kentucky
Georgia
Nebraska
Texas
The range lies roughly south of a line from southeastern Nebraska through
southern Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana to southwestern Ohio.
In the southern states, it is native from central Texas to western Georgia
and north to Kentucky.
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Illinois
8. The brown recluse venom is extremely poisonous. Its powerful
necrotizing venom (destroys living tissue) contains the dermonecrotic
agent sphingomyelinase D.
It’s even more potent than a rattlesnake. The recluse venom causes less
disease than a rattlesnake bite because of the small quantities injected
into its victims. It’s toxic to cells and tissues.
The brown recluse spider is rarely aggressive, and bites from the species
are uncommon. The spider usually bites only when pressed against the
skin, such as when tangled within clothes, towels, bedding and inside
work gloves.
This species of spider normally attacks its prey by injecting venom along
with its bite. The venom is powerful and it is used to kill other insects.
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9. The bite frequently is not felt initially and may not be immediately
painful, but it can be serious.
The bites produced a range of symptoms common to many members
of the Loxosceles genus known as loxoscelism, which may be severe
dermonecrotic lesions (i.e. necrosis); an even smaller number produce
severe cutaneous (skin) or viscerocutaneous (systemic) symptoms.
The systemic symptoms most commonly experienced include nausea,
vomiting, fever, rashes, and muscle and joint pain. Rarely, such bites
can result in hemolysis (the bursting of red blood cells.),
thrombocytopenia, disseminated intravascular coagulation, organ
damage, and even death.
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10. Most fatalities are in children under the age of seven or those with a
weak immune system.
The bite forms a necrotizing ulcer that destroys soft tissue and may
take months to heal, leaving deep scars. These bites usually become
painful and itchy within 2 to 8 hours. Pain and other local effects
worsen 12 to 36 hours after the bite, and the necrosis develops over
the next few days.
Over time, the wound may grow to as large as 25 cm. The damaged
tissue becomes gangrenous.
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11. Progressed brown recluse spider bite:
Initially the bite site is mildly red
After three days: necrosis (death) of skin and
subcutaneous fat.
Ninth day: severe destructive necrotic lesions with
deep wide borders result.
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12. Day 38°: After the bite, a wide area of dead tissue
was excised, necessitating skin grafting.
View of healed brown recluse wound approximately
10 months after the bite.
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