Strange how the only spider I was told to be concerned about growing up was a bite from the "Red Back" and even that wasn't generally dangerous except for the young, sick and elderly. Now according to what I've read about the White Tail the bite symptoms are similar to the Red Back bite and there is no proof that it causes a arachnogenic necrosis.
"White-tailed spiders wander about human dwellings and may be encountered unexpectedly, unlike the
black house spider and the
redback which are more often seen in a web. They may be responsible for a disproportionately high number of spider bites compared with other Australian spiders, because of their wandering habits. Of the 130 cases studied by Isbister and Gray, more than 60% of the victims had been bitten by spiders that had got into clothing, towels or beds.
The bite of white-tailed spiders has been wrongly implicated in cases of
arachnogenic necrosis. The misassociation stems from a paper presented at the
International Society on Toxinology World Congress held in Brisbane in 1982. Both white-tailed and the
wolf spider were considered as candidates for
possibly causing
suspected spider bite
necrosis, though it later turned out that the
recluse spider was the culprit in the reported cases from
Brazil.
Following this initial report, numerous other cases implicated white-tailed spiders in causing necrotic ulcers.
[11][12][13][14] All of these cases lacked a positively identified spider—or even a spider bite in some cases. Additionally there had not been a case of arachnogenic necrosis reported in the two hundred years of European
colonisation before these cases.
Clinical toxicologist Geoffrey Isbister studied 130 cases of
arachnologist-identified white-tailed spider bites, and found no necrosis or confirmed infections, concluding that such outcomes are very unlikely for a white-tailed spider bite.
The major effects from a bite were local
pain, a red mark, local swelling and itchiness; rarely systemic effects of
nausea,
vomiting,
malaise or
headache occurred.
[2] All these symptoms are generally mild and resolve over time.
[
