It causes swelling, pain, sometimes muscle pain that can take a few days or weeks to go away,” he said.īlack widow spiders have a distinctive shiny, black, round body, and two reddish triangles on their abdomen. “Their bite is a bit worse than a wasp sting. Ewing says they often end up in Canada on shipments of grapes, because they can hide easily in the bunches.Ī bite from a yellow sac is not very painful, but symptoms can linger for weeks. Yellow Sac spiders are native to California, Mexico, and parts of Central America and are often confused with the brown recluse spiders. Their venom is “necrotic,” meaning it causes a small amount of tissue near the bite mark to die, leaving behind a sore that is painful for weeks.īut Ewing says the spiders are “very shy and secretive” and bites are actually quite rare, because brown recluse spiders prefer to stay in dark undisturbed places. The brown recluse is a “surprisingly small” spider that can “pack a particularly potent bite,” says Ewing. Here’s a look at a few of the spiders he says Canadians should know about and how dangerous their bites are: He says venomous spiders can easily be transported to Canada from the tropics, typically on shipments of fruit. “The only way to be absolutely sure that it was a spider that bit you is to see the spider actually biting you,” he told CTV’s Your Morning. Her wound is similar to that of a Nova Scotia man who was told he was likely bitten by a brown recluse spider.Ĭalum Ewing, a spider expert who works at the Nova Scotia Museum, says it’s difficult to diagnose a spider bite after the fact, because everyone reacts differently to insect bites. Still, that doesn’t mean that dangerous spiders don’t make their way into Canada.Ī Nova Scotia woman is currently recovering from an “unbearable” bite that was likely caused by a spider. Canada has its fair share of biting insects, such as blackflies and mosquitoes, but most of our spiders are pretty harmless.
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