Please Help! Is this a brown recluse??

[serawara]

Hello from Turkey

I have rent a new home for me and family (including a daughter 4.5 years old). This morning in bathroom, i found this (below) spider and killed it. When i look closely i thought it was a brown recluse and panicked!! Because i know (suppose) that there is no brown recluse in Turkey.. Can you help me if it is really a brown recluse?? :'( Thanks

 

[BrokenVisage]

Judging by Google images, it's close..

 

[lxskllr]

Kinda looks like one. Had a dream the other night that a guy I work with had an enormous spider on the side of his head that was being attacked by a recluse. He didn't seem too bothered. Just got still when the recluse came in for the attack. Me otoh D^:

 

[Artdeco]

Are you in the US or Turkey.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I live in MA and I've never known anyone to be bitten or hurt by a brown recluse spider.
I know the internet says otherwise but I believe their danger is overrated.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Looks a lot like one. Could be another species that does live in your region (or Recluses might be migrating due to climate changes). There's I think a few that are similar (for instance in the US there's also Hobo Spiders that are similar and found in regions where the Brown Recluse isn't).

 

[darkswordsman17]

I live in MA and I've never known anyone to be bitten or hurt by a brown recluse spider.
I know the internet says otherwise but I believe their danger is overrated.

Yeah it absolutely is. I also personally think that the big awful bite photos you see aren't caused by the venom itself but rather by the bites getting infected and then the person not doing anything about it for extended period of time.

Recluses don't like being near people, they don't like to bite larger things, and generally only will when they don't have much option (they're in bedding/clothes, right up against the skin and can't scurry away, so its bite or get crushed in their view). And then they might not inject venom, and even if they do the chances of it turning into one of the huge sloughing awful ones is very rare. You'd much more typically get a probably itchy lesion and I think people probably get them infected and that's when they fester into something a lot worse. Even then, I think most of those instances the people also went several weeks or even months before going to a doctor about it.

I think it is similar to the Komodo Dragons. They supposedly had venomous saliva, but it turns out the opposite was true. Because they often like to eat festering dead organisms that are lousy with bacteria, when they would get checked they'd have that in their mouths (I believe they have something kinda like crocodiles where their blood actually makes them resistant to infection/diseases), and then that got extrapolated to them having bacterially poisonous saliva. The nasty recluse bites I think are actually infected with strains of flesh-eating bacteria, and its not the venom that destroys that much tissue.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Quick search revealed there is a Mediterranean Recluse that's in the same family.
No picture was posted.

 

[swamplizard]

Here is an actual brown recluse:

https://tse2.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.M28a819e30a7c1c49a7a225b5944d206fo0&pid=15.1

 

[lxskllr]

Quick search revealed there is a Mediterranean Recluse that's in the same family.
No picture was posted.

Looks more pink...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_recluse_spider

 

[runzwithsizorz]

I live in MA and I've never known anyone to be bitten or hurt by a brown recluse spider.
I know the internet says otherwise but I believe their danger is overrated.

My ex, who worked at a hospital, (so she had good medical care), was bitten by one in San Diego. After she was healed, she had skin grafts to cover the hole around where she was bitten. So, yeah their venom does destroy flesh.

 

[Artdeco]

I've seen a half dozen people bitten by them over the years, and maybe another dozen people have shown me their scars, I used to ignore spiders, but after seeing what happens, I want to kill every brown spider.

 

[gorcorps]

My sister got bit on the ear by one and almost lost her ear because of it. Kill em all

 

[olds]

Are you in the US or Turkey.

lol

 

[CZroe]

My ex, who worked at a hospital, (so she had good medical care), was bitten by one in San Diego. After she was healed, she had skin grafts to cover the hole around where she was bitten. So, yeah their venom does destroy flesh.

The problem is, doctors and medical personnel are reverse-diagnosing based on the destroyed flesh without ever seeing or knowing of a spider bite. We already know that recluse bites rarely result in necrosis but that's the only explanation most medics have for the necrosis. I read that the vast majority of so-called "brown recluse bites" we're likely misdiagnosed.

 

[BoomerD]

OMG! I found a spider! Quick...join a computer-oriented forum to ask what it is!

 

[Ichinisan]

I turned off the water as I finished my shower a couple weeks ago and noticed a recluse-looking spider about 5 inches from my foot.

I lifted my foot and the spider lifted-up with it. The spider was attached to my foot by an invisible bit of webbing, which it started to climb.

At work that morning, my leg fell off.







Well, it fell asleep anyway.

 

[runzwithsizorz]

The problem is, doctors and medical personnel are reverse-diagnosing based on the destroyed flesh without ever seeing or knowing of a spider bite. We already know that recluse bites rarely result in necrosis but that's the only explanation most medics have for the necrosis. I read that the vast majority of so-called "brown recluse bites" we're likely misdiagnosed.

Wrong! she and the doctors knew immediately what it was.

 

[CZroe]

Wrong! she and the doctors knew immediately what it was.

You still haven't told us:
Did she actually see the spider?

 

[runzwithsizorz]

You still haven't told us:
Did she actually see the spider?

She saw *A* spider, and it wasn't black. Sense she worked at a hospital the doctors saw her within 24 hours.

 

[Artdeco]

The problem is, doctors and medical personnel are reverse-diagnosing based on the destroyed flesh without ever seeing or knowing of a spider bite. We already know that recluse bites rarely result in necrosis but that's the only explanation most medics have for the necrosis. I read that the vast majority of so-called "brown recluse bites" we're likely misdiagnosed.

I wouldn't be quite so quick to say that, brown recluse bites are pretty easy to diagnose, no other North American spider comes close to that kind of tissue damage

 

[CZroe]

She saw *A* spider, and it wasn't black. Sense she worked at a hospital the doctors saw her within 24 hours.

You still haven't told us that she saw a spider bite her and then developed necrotic flesh at the site of the bite. I could not be more clear that this is what is missing from the majority of brown recluse bite diagnoses.

I saw a spider that wasn't black too. If I get a necrotising flesh condition, does that mean I was bitten by a brown recluse?

I am not belittling what happened. I am pointing out a real problem and asking questions which none of your answers have satisfied. If she really did get bit by a spider and developed a necrotic wound as a result: I'm sorry, but it happens. The problem is that it often happens from unknown things that aren't even spider bites. The one thing we know that sometimes does cause it is a brown recluse, though most brown recluse bites do not have this effect. Most diagnoses are making assumptions about the cause of the necrotic wound which leads to FAR more diagnoses than actual recluse bites could be responsible for.

I wouldn't be quite so quick to say that, brown recluse bites are pretty easy to diagnose, no other North American spider comes close to that kind of tissue damage

This is the EXACT circular reasoning I was talking about. Other spider bites DO often result in identical wounds. So do incidents that could not even be classified as a "bite."

http://spiders.ucr.edu/necrotic.html

 

[ImpulsE69]

I live in MA and I've never known anyone to be bitten or hurt by a brown recluse spider.
I know the internet says otherwise but I believe their danger is overrated.

I do, and wow, he got bit in the forehead. It was brutal. It swelled up to larger than a golf ball pretty quickly. IIRC he got really sick, passed out...I don't think he 'almost died' but he was in the hospital for quite some time.

 

[olds]

She saw *A* spider, and it wasn't black. Sense she worked at a hospital the doctors saw her within 24 hours.

That makes since.

 

[ControlD]

I live in MA and I've never known anyone to be bitten or hurt by a brown recluse spider.
I know the internet says otherwise but I believe their danger is overrated.

Maybe. Anecdotal story time.

My band director in high school was a big boy. Probably 400 pounds or more. He got bit by a brown recluse when he was moving some boxes in his attic. He went to the hospital later that day when the bite started to look odd. By the time he got out, he was down to something like 180 pounds. He looked like a damned zombie he had so much loose skin everywhere.

In the end he actually said that bite probably saved his life, but he was hospitalized for a LONG time and it was touch and go for quite some time. He never got back to his previous large size, so the whole thing was a life changing event. It could be that some people are more sensitive than others and it could be that medical treatment for such bites is better now than it was in 1984. Still, if I see any spider that looks remotely close to a recluse it is getting taken out with extreme prejudice.