page_title: Brown recluse spider
section_title: Danger and myth
hierarchical_section_title: Brown recluse spider / Danger and myth
caption_attribution_description: English: 4 mo. after a brown recluse spider bite, scaring remains
context_page_description: The brown recluse spider is a timid but dangerous spider that lives in North America.
context_section_description: Brown recluse spiders have been feared since they were discovered in 1940, and people will often take drastic approaches to rid their homes of these spiders. Spider experts noticed that the bite of a brown recluse could sometimes lead to a terrible infection called necrosis. Sometimes the necrosis becomes fatal, but these fatal bites are actually very rare, and most bites from brown recluses are no more harmful than a normal spider bite. The spider's bite is most dangerous for people who are young or overweight.
  It is very common for people bitten by spiders to arrive in a doctor's office without bringing the spider that bit them. When this happens, a doctor must guess what sort of spider could have bitten the person. The brown recluse spider is a very common spider to blame, since its name is so well-known, but it is very seldom that the brown recluse spider was involved. Doctors' guesswork has led many people to believe brown recluses exist outside their native area, such as in California, even though this is not true. It is pretty common for a Brown recluse to bite someone and that person may not feel any symptoms for multiple hours or even days from the time of the bite. In most cases, either a disease was the cause of the symptoms, or a different kind of spider bit the person and the doctor makes a mistake when he or she guesses it was a brown recluse.
  Very little is known about the venom of the brown recluse, and spider venom experts have been looking for a long time for ways to effectively tell whether a brown recluse has bitten a patient as well as an antidote for its venom.
caption: A brown recluse bite that has healed. It has left a scar behind.
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