Photo Of Spider Explosion Under Photographer's Bed Wins Award & A Permanent Space In My Nightmares

Kate10/19/2021 6:45 PM

He was in bed when he saw the little spiders...

That photo is a winner in the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest, and the site's caption doesn't make me feel any less terrified:

After noticing tiny spiders all over his bedroom, Gil [Wizen] looked under his bed. There, guarding its brood, was one of the world’s most venomous spiders. Before safely relocating it outdoors, he photographed the human-hand-sized Brazilian wandering spider using forced perspective to make it appear even larger.
Brazilian wandering spiders roam forest floors at night in search of prey such as frogs and cockroaches. Their toxic venom can be deadly to mammals including humans, but it also has medicinal uses.

Cue all the "nopes" and "kill it with fire" GIFs because despite being hacky & overdone, that's exactly how I feel. Instead of buying the next plane ticket out of there Wizen removed the spider (how?!) and apparently stayed. What about the 1,000 or so eggs that just hatched under the bed, too? Not sure if they're venomous yet but either way:

Giphy Images.

Worth noting, there is one other GIF that describes interactions with these spiders which I shall describe as pros & cons…

Giphy Images.

Pro: Their venom can spark a powerful chub that lasts for several hours.
Con: Those boners are apparently painful instead of fun & impotence can follow. Also, their venom can cause loss of muscle control, breathing problems, paralysis & death.

Comparing the two I'd say a free mega boner is still a win?

Also, while I'm going down the rabbit hole on this - you may have heard of this spider before, but called a 'banana spider'… That's because one of the most common ways they escape into the world is on grocery store bananas..

In nightmare-fuel story from 2017, a woman in England unleashed an infestation in her home that way:

Gemma Price, 30, was mid-mouthful of the banana when she made the discovery.
"I had brought a banana up to my bedroom and opened it and I think I must have broken an egg sack because hundreds of these tiny spiders went everywhere," Ms Price said.
"They landed on my arm and I just started thrashing. They went all over the bed and some on Leo's cot.
"I called the police and they said I should evacuate the property straight away. Luckily my mam lives across the road."

Here's another from 2013, which leads me to hope our spider-detecting technology on bananas has advanced greatly since then:

Super rare for that to happen though, and I need to remind myself that most spiders do good work in their environment eating pesky insects & rodents and/or hyping you up on the job.