Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Black Widow Bite - The Most Venomous Spider in North America Munches a Man's Toe

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Wes tells the story of a man whose toe got a little too close for comfort for a black widow, and then gets into a super interesting round of animal reproduction info dumps. Jeff establishes his Mount Rushmore of serial killers, and Mike has a pro-tip for first time cologne wearers. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds        Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What was the bug that finally got him, you think? We should let that be our intro, because everyone needs to know that we just did 10 seconds of silence for Schmidt. Jeff, who's Schmidt? Schmidt's the pain index guy. Wait, hold on. You got to take my bug joke in it. Take my pants off real quick. Yeah, Mike, what?

Mike, we're rolling, dude. Oh, whoops. It just gets really hot when I record. I don't know why. You guys get warm? Yeah, sometimes. Schmidt was the pain index guy. From, I already said that.

I know, from Jeff's episode where we talked about, what do we talk about him, right? The King of Sting. Yeah, yeah. Now, we talked more Coyote, Peterson, Jacks, World Wildlife. Guess what? It's like a three-way. We're talking about them today some more, by the way. The three pillars.

I like Schmidt, because Schmidt's the guy that started the pain index. It was kind of the most scientific about it. But Schmidt died. So, R-A-P to a real legend in the Sting world. Now coyote's on top. This is a, this is tooth and claw podcast. That's us. I'm Jeff.

We got Wes and Mike. Wes is a wildlife biologist. He's the number one podcaster in the world. I'm Jeff. That's you, dude. And that's Mike. I'm Jeff. I played number three singles high school tennis, varsity tennis.

Nice, dude. And we got Mike. Mike. Who's wearing a Kirby hat. Yeah, Mike can play every character is Smash Bros. Mike's become the real, you become the clear favorite in Smash Bros. Among us, I feel like. I feel like you can beat us pretty handily these days.

Yeah, I don't know how much. I miss the Cube days when we were all pretty evenly matched. Oh, so great. Yeah. But Jeff's real bona fides, I would say you're more of a Rocket Leagueer than a tennis player these days. Oh, that's true. You're good at rock. He's good.

He's like top one percentile, I would say. We got real into Fall Guys for a while, too. I've played that in a long time. Yeah. Well, yeah, thanks for the intro, Jeff. We're gamers. This is a gaming podcast where we talk about poop and gaming and all sorts of. Oh, speaking of poop, can I get, I was going to save my poop story for this episode

because I was going to do this episode later in the year. but this is the episode that I think I need to talk about it because it involves a fear of spiders. And we're talking about spiders today. Spoiler alert. But Jeff's got some stuff to get to first and then I'll do it. I just want to ask because I flew this last week. I want to ask like when you guys are checking your bags, do you always think like, well, if there's a bomb in my bag? No. I've never once thought that.

When my bag's going through the scanner, I always just think like worst case scenario for everything. Yeah. It's like, what if my Uber driver put a bomb in my bag? Yeah, I've never once thought that. You never wonder if there's just a, somehow a bomb in your back? I wonder if there's other things in there that could get me in trouble, but I never think about a bomb. Jeremy, he's a listener who drives Uber. I guarantee you he's put a bomb in someone's back.

I'll put a bomb in someone's back. I'll take that. I'll take that bad. Yeah, I doubt it. No, I really like, I won't have like any type of drugs, but then I'll be like, are there drugs in my bag? And it's like, no, like, I haven't had me at home. I think that's, I worry about that.

I don't know. That seems a little bit more reasonable to me because like, I feel like drug runners sometimes will slip stuff into people's bags and then tell people on the other side what the person looks like. But yeah, like a bomb's hard to get through security or anything like that. that. You don't think terrorists, you sneak bombs into people's bags? I don't think so. But that's why they always make sure you keep an eye on your luggage and stuff. When you get arrested for a bomb in your bag, I'm going to be the only one who believes you and you say you didn't put it there. I love how, like,

the story I've been waiting to tell for weeks. Like, you had to ask us that question before. But it is a good thought. I have thought about that before, but it's because with me, it's always been drugs. And it's because I used to watch the show called Locked Up Abroad, where they, like, ran through all these scenarios of people that get locked up for, like, moving drugs. And there were a couple people that had, like, drugs, like, snuck into their stuff, and they didn't realize they were carrying them. And so I do think about that.

And I do, I understand that feeling. Yeah, I think it's just, like, when it's going through the scanner, you're just, like, waiting there. So it's, like, your mind goes to, like, what's the worst possible outcome right now? Yeah. Yeah. I do remember when we were driving up, me, you and Brent,

Jeff when we were driving up to Alaska that one time, and border control stopped us for like five hours. And they didn't really look through our phones. Everything. And like, they questioned us on everything. And they brought me into their stupid little office. And they were like flipping through my book of CDs. And the guy was like, still listen to CDs, huh?

I was like, that's not crazy to have CDs in court. It was, but seriously, like it took him so long. I started getting nervous. I was like, is there any? possible way that there is something in one of our stuff that we're all going to rat you out just for like anything they suggested we had a dog bark at our car at a border patrol in Texas once and I thought one of the guys was going to shoot Jeff because Jeff kept putting his hands in his pockets the guy wanted to too well thanks for let me talk about airplane of course I'm sorry I wasn't trying to get on your case you can talk about your poop now that's Well, we, okay, so we alluded to this on a subscriber episode, and then recently I alluded to it again. And then I was like, no, I'm going to save this for when I do another spider episode.

And then today, as I was preparing the episode, I was like, you know what, I really wanted to do a spider episode for a while. And it made me rethink of this story. And it's probably the second most embarrassing story of my entire lifetime. Jeff, you missed the cut on this little practice. you were alive, but you never were old enough to do it. But I want to tell the story. I'm not sure I would have been in office, regardless, but keep going. Anyway, when I was a kid, I was probably like five or six.

My mom was out of town, and when my mom would go out of town, my dad would always rent movies that she would normally wouldn't watch or whatever. And usually me and my older brother at least got to watch them too. And this particular time, he rented the movie Arakophobia, which for that age, I was too young. for it and it scared the shit out of me. It was really, oh, I shouldn't say it scared the shit out of me. It's actually the opposite.

It was really, really, really scary. And there's this part where a spider crawls under a toilet seat. And for whatever reason, that was like the scene that just got lodged in my brain. And so for a while, I, like, wouldn't sit on a toilet seat and I would just hover. And then that progressed to just not going poop. I just never would do it. And what I would do instead is I would sit on my heel, like I would. I would get in this crouch position and sit on my heel until the urge would pass.

And my older brother started doing this too, and we called it sitting. And we would literally go into the bathroom and like sit rather than poop. And my parents would be like, are you pooping? Because they knew that we were doing this. So we'd be like, uh-huh. And we'd just be like sitting on our heels. And I'd be like on the playground or whatever, like running around. And then suddenly I would just like have to stop and sit on my heel.

heel for like 20 to 30 seconds and then get up and go. And I knew it was weird. And my friends would always be like, what are you doing? And I'd be like, oh, nothing. I just got tired or something. I would do it like 10 times as we were playing. And we literally would go weeks without taking a shit. Did it like hurt your body?

Yeah. It felt I would get weird cramps. And I just, it felt really weird. But it kind of felt good too. I'm not going to like. Do you kind of want to try it again? I don't. I don't think I could.

do it anymore. So anyway, I would like, I would just be running all around the playground. I'd be stopping and sitting. We'd go weeks. It did like kind of feel weird. It kind of hurt, but it also felt kind of good to like push those like poops

back up into your butt. Yeah, we don't need to explore that much further. Yeah. Anyway, then when you finally would take a dump, it would just be the most painful, worse constipation you can imagine. And I never it's made me like hate taking a shit because like it would hurt and I never felt satisfied. And so finally, this all ended.

It came to a kind of an end because one day my older brother went poop and he couldn't flush this like monster rock hard poop that came out. And my dad went in and looked and saw that it was the size of like a big egg plant and like rock hard. And he was like something that big shouldn't be able to come out of my seven-year old son's body. And he was like, we need to go to the hospital. And Cyrus was like, I know what this is and it won't happen again. Anyway, so slowly I weaned myself off of it. But real weird time in my life. It never heard you can crack addict, just slowly weaning off. Did you ever think maybe just to use a bush or something? No, it just, it snowballed. Like it started with the fear of spiders and then it just

like turned into how I did things like I just stopped like I liked it you started liking it too much he's a scientist at heart Mike yeah that's true he's just creating like the mad scientist testing within his own body on himself yeah between eating bugs and not pooping like you guys know a lot about my weird ass child your dumps were like 90% bugs too probably right I'd probably just crawling around in there forever. Telly poop, trying. I'd eat spiders,

but I wouldn't sit on a toilet that maybe had one in it. Yeah. All right. Anyway. Makes sense. So we are, we are talking about a creepy crawly today.

It's been a while since we've done a creepy crawley episode. I'm really excited. They're like the ones that when we research, I find out the most new facts, the most things that I find really interesting. Because I'm, I work with mammals and I feel like I have a general idea of what mammals do. But when you get into these little arthroids,

theropods and stuff, it gets real interesting for me. Cool. So if I were to ask you guys, of all the spiders in the U.S., which one do you think is the most dangerous? Yeah, Black Widow. Mike, would you say the same thing? I was going to guess Brown recluse, but I don't know if those are stateside, are they? They are, yes.

Black Widow Jeff is the answer I was looking for. They're the ones that are just... Jeff? Black Widow Jeff. Yeah. They're the ones that are infamous for being dangerous. They're the ones that are, you know, when you talk about a dangerous spider, I think that's what pops into most people's heads. Brown recluse is more kind of, I think, the thinking man's dangerous spider.

But Black Widow, since you're a kid, you learn about Black Widows. I take that personally. Okay. I'm not saying. You are right. You know what a Brown recluse is, too. I wasn't saying that as a personal attack. You were that. That was the answer I was looking for, Jeff.

You got it right. How about Brown Recluse is like the pseudo intellectual pick? Someone trying to show off that they know. Yeah, that's kind of what it is. They don't really. Right. So there's a lot of misinformation about Black Widows. There's a lot of stuff out there that's wrong.

Some of the even like quote unquote trusted resources that I found had things that I learned were wrong. And I think there's a lot of fearmongering too out there about Black Widows. And we're going to dispel some of those myths in this episode, which again is my favorite kind of episode where we have a misunderstood animal that we get to help people feel a little bit more comfortable around. What animals aren't misunderstood? That's a good question. They're all your favorite episodes. Panda bears, yeah.

Fair enough. Yeah, that's true. They are all kind of my favorite episodes. But I do really like this one. Sorry, I'll take some wind out of your stuff. No, no, it's all right. I deserved it, Jeff. All right, so I didn't really find a great big story that had a really good narrative on that show.

I was on great big story. I knew you were going to say that. As soon as that came out of my mouth. You were the star. I couldn't find a really great story with a long narrative, but I did find some smaller ones that were really good, some really interesting facts. And you guys know me and fun facts. I love a good fun fact.

But we are going to start with the story. So this story features a guy named Jackson Landers. Either you guys know this guy? No, I know. I've been following Jackson Mahomes on TikTok. He's a big TikTok. He got some fire content after the Super Bowl. Who's Jackson Mahomes?

Patrick Mahomes, little brother. Oh, okay. Jackson Landers? Jackson Landers is this guy. Sounds kind of like a discount Flash Gordon or something. It kind of does. It's a good name. It reminds me of when Homer changed his name to Max Powers.

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Fuel restrictions apply. Seasite for details. So Jackson Landers, he's a professional outdoorsman. He's written multiple books on living on wild game. He even spent a year and a half exclusively living on invasive species that he hunted, which I think is a really cool idea. He teaches outdoorsy workshops around the country, and he's a frequent contributor to the New York Times,

which is actually where I found his story. So Jackson was at his home in Abermaral County, Virginia, when he saw his first resident black widow spider in a web on his porch. And he's really fascinated by the spider. He sees that it has this really intricate little web. It's got these beautiful markings. And he thinks it's a really neat animal. But he also knows that his kids play on that porch.

And so he quickly dispatches the spider. He gets rid of it. This leads him to then search around his property. And he looks for more black widows. And he learns that his house is somewhat of a haven for black widows. He finds a lot of them. And he says there was days where he was killing like a dozen black widows daily. So he had a lot of black widows on his property.

Again, he still has a fond kind of appreciation for the spiders, but he is killing them because he doesn't want his kids to get bit or to have any problems with them. He even has this frozen black widow female that he finds in the winter that he puts in a jar and he's feeding it moths and other insects. And he gets really fascinated watching it in this jar and feels like he learned a lot about the spiders while it's in this jar. So, cut to spring 2013.

This spider eats, likes to eat flies. Yeah, it sure likes bugs, has a little notepad. So it's a warm spring day in 2013. In Jackson, ever the outdoorsman decides to head to a local fishing hole to catch some fish for dinner. Fishing was a really common activity for him. He went frequently enough that he would just leave a lot of his gear on his porch. And it would just kind of be waiting there ready to go whenever he got the urge. And that gear included some aqua socks.

And aquas socks are like, if you've never worn them before, they're kind of like neoprene booties that have a harder bottom that you can wear in the water. They don't necessarily protect you from the water, but you can walk on stuff and whatnot in the water with them. And he would just leave these aquas socks on his porch because they were really accessible. But what do we know about this dude's porch? Black widows. Black widows.

Yep. They sure like that porch. And one little female black widow, those aquassox. had been sitting there long enough for her to find them, scurry inside, build a tiny web deep in the recesses of those shoes. What do we know about spiders? They like dark little holes. There we go.

That's what I was thinking. All right. In her guess, like this spider's estimation, this dark little hole was a perfect place to make her new home and to wait for prey. And that prey could include everything from little tiny flying insects up to small reptiles and little tiny mammals. And for larger prey, he lives in Virginia. Abermaral. They don't have squatters rights there for spiders. I don't think the spider owns his shoes now, but maybe.

Technically, you probably should have her just have them. Prey could include all these different things. And for larger prey, she would need her secret weapon, which is a potent neurotoxic venom that would quickly attack the synaptic nerves of the animal that was unlucky enough to wander into her sticky clutches. That venom would cause a quick death, and it would give her next meal that she would lather in these digestive juices

and then slurp down that slurry of whatever melts after she sprays it with her juices. What a way to say that. That was good alliteration. Made me want to be a spider and just... Yeah, it's cool. Spires are cool. We're going to get in some cool stuff about them. When you said slurry, did you mean slurpee?

No, Mike, I meant slurpy, but a slurpy does sound great right now. I love to slurpy, too. A little insect slurpy that's just all melted insects. That sounds great to me. Might help me with my constipation too. Anyway, that same venom that's useful for subduing prey could also be a really critical defense tool. And when that little black widow was presented with the larger threat, she would be able to use that venom to defend herself. Can you say woodl black widow for now?

Widow, Waddle, black widow? Sure. Yeah. If that comes up again, I will say it that way. But surely this spider is going to be safe in her new home, right? Surely. So Jackson leaves his house. He grabs his fishing tackle. He picks up his aqua shoes from the porch and he throws everything in his car and drives the eight miles to his fishing hole. When he parks his car, he puts his aquas shoes on quickly, pushing his feet into what recently become the home of this tiny invader. Jackson takes about a dozen steps towards the water when he feels a stinging sensation on the second. toe of his left foot. To him, it felt like maybe there's a thorn in there or possibly a bee had been in his shoe. So he stops walking and he takes off his shoe to investigate. And that's kind of like, for me at least, whenever I put on a shoe and I feel something kind of poke me, like if there's like some hay or something in my shoe, my mind immediately goes to, oh, I hope there wasn't a spider

in my shoe. Like that's kind of like a fear for me. You feel that way too, Jeff? Yeah, I watched like Some video of a lady who put her foot in a shoe and got bit by a black widow and a widow back widow. Right. And she like said it felt like a rock or like it didn't even hurt that bad. And it just kept biting her. Oh, geez. The initial bite from all the different encounters that I read, the bite doesn't feel like much. It just kind of feels like you have something poke you.

It's later that it gets really bad. So, he pulls off his shoe and he sees the smeared remains of a black widow on the insul. He knows that he's been bitten by the spider. And then a look at his toe confirms that he had been bitten because he had the two small pinprick bite marks. So he sits down on a rock and he's wondering what to do. He's thinking, okay, he knows quite a bit about black widows at this point. He thinks maybe it was just a dry bite or they didn't really inject much venom. And I can just keep fishing and it's not going to be a problem.

Or maybe it's... Yeah, it sounds like Grandpa when he got a bit by a rattlesnake. Or he's like, maybe it was worse, you know? But he just decides he's going to fish and roll the dice and see what happens. So he wades into the water, he starts fishing. And three catfish later, he becomes acutely aware that his bite was not going to be one of the harmless ones. There's a warmth in his abdomen, and that warmth turns to an uncomfortable pressure and then a really painful cramp. And he knows that he hadn't lucked out with a dry bite.

and that he needs medical attention. So he gets in his car and he drives himself to the University of Virginia Medical Center where he really becomes somewhat of a celebrity among these doctors, because they're all bored from like just normal day-to-day routine shit, and then they suddenly have a black widow bite. And it's also like a lot of students,

so they're all peeking in. And when they asked him when it happened, he said, uh, three catfish ago, three or four catfish ago. That's his entire life. That's how he measures time by catfish. By the evening, the symptoms have progressed to his chest. He's experiencing pulses of pain from his abdomen and these waves of muscle spasms.

And most worryingly to him was that the pain was intensifying and creeping closer and closer to his chest and his heart. One excerpt from this article that he wrote was really funny to me. I guess at one point a resident at the hospital peaked in to check on him and said, not looking too good, are we? And he responded, you should see the other guy, which is a pretty good response if you're in a lot of pain. especially. Yeah. So, you know, based on the other venomous creatures we've talked about,

someone's in a lot of pain, they're in the hospital, they've been envenomated, what do you think the doctors are going to want to do? They're going to suck it out. What do you actually think they're going to do? Foot fetish doctor. He just, like, is adamant that he needs to suck it out. Cut it off. What do you think, like, okay.

Yeah, amputate. If this were a snake. Anti-venom. If this is a snake bite, right, anti-venin. So that's what you would guess. And there actually is an existing anti-venin for Black Widows. But the thing is, it's really hard to find. It's not made, like with snakes, you can make it in larger quantities because you can

extract a lot of venom from snakes. It's really hard to extract venom from Black Widow spiders. And then they also make it by essentially just injecting spider venom into a horse and then getting horse blood and extracting the preempting the prey. And there's this really crazy side effect that some people get from Black Widow anti-Venon, where they develop like a lethal allergy to horse proteins. So even like contact with a horse could potentially kill them. Oh, wow. Yeah.

So it's not really worth rolling the dice on this Black Widow anti-Venon unless you're about to die. Yeah, unless you, because Mike doesn't care if you can't touch horses. Exactly. Mike actually feels like a good thing for you. When we're like, oh, Mike, get on a horse, it'll be funny for our listeners. You can be like, I'll die. I'll literally die. I think the thing is like if you come, if you even like come into contact with things that a horse is touched or whatever, you could potentially die from it.

So it's really, it's debilitating for these people. Can't play horseshoes anymore? Yeah, maybe. So he turns down the anti-venin. I don't even know if they offer it to him. But what they do offer is they say there's a new experimental type of antivenin that's extracted from sheep and that they're actually doing like a clinical trial of it and they are wondering if he wants to be part of the trial. So he's either going to get a placebo or this new type. And he's like a very curious person.

He likes those kind of risks, you know, and he goes for it. He says he wants to try it. How long can I go without pooping as a kid? That type of person. Exactly. He loves really pushing his body to the limit. So he gets it and they give him an injection. It instantly helps with the pain.

It even gives him a really strong sense of euphoria that he equates with recreational drug use. And by the next day, he's feeling great and he's back on his bullshit. He finds a spider like in his house and he kills it. What? Yeah. Got his revenge. Yeah. I mean, he'd been doing that before, too, though.

Yeah. Yeah. That's why I said he's back on his bullshit. He's just doing his day-to-day routine again. Is he kind of like nervous about sheep now, though? I don't think so. I think as far as I know, this new anti-venin isn't like available yet, but they're still probably testing it and running through trials and whatnot. It seems somewhat unnecessary to me. And I'm going to go into Y in a little bit. But he took it. He did take it. And I think it was more. So why wouldn't he be worried about sheep?

Yeah, he might be. To be honest, like they don't really. know what the side effects are yet. And he just kind of wanted to roll the dice and try it. And we are going to talk a little bit more about why anti-venin for a black widow isn't really that necessary, in my opinion. So let's do some biology. And this is going to be really an interesting dive into their biology. I think they're endlessly interesting animals. And as I mentioned before, we're going to disprove some myths about black widows. So our North American black widow spiders are part of the genus latrodectus, which has about 34 species, and they're distributed throughout the world. Every continent, aside from Antarctica, has a spider from the widow family of spiders.

In Australia, they're called... I get them out to Antarctica. Yeah, we got to ship some down there. They'll do really well down there. In Australia, they're called like redback spiders. There's a Mediterranean widow spider. In the UK, I think they call them... Shoot, I forget, like brown widow or something like that.

Their most dangerous animal. Yeah, truly is probably their most dangerous animal. It's a good point. So female black widows, we're talking, so for the rest of this episode, we're mostly going to be talking about our North American black widow, the one that you could potentially have in your house right now in Utah, in other places as well. So female black widow spiders are generally dark brown or dark black in color. They typically have a red or orange hourglass shape marking on their,

ventral side, their underside of their abdomen. Males are typically significantly smaller than the females, and they're often a light brown color. Do they have the red and orange? They can have like some hourglass markings, but they're typically not brightly colored like the females are. They're like a light tan or a brown. Do you guys know why they're called widow spiders?

Yeah. Why? Because after sex, they kill their partner and then they're widow. Exactly. That's exactly why they're called widow spiders. I feel like that doesn't do, like, widows may be too kind of term. Maybe we should like label them, I don't know, homicidal. Well, that's actually, we shouldn't label them widow even because we're going to get into why that's a bit of a misnomer. They're famous for...

It's not a bad way to die. It's not. I agree. You're going to think that even more in a little bit. They're famous for sexual cannibalism, but it turns out they are. are not particularly sexually cannibalistic among spiders. So sexual cannibalism is like a common thing in spiders. And black widows, it's not, it's not like a trait that's particular to them. And our North American black widow spiders, it hardly ever happens. Why is it sexual cannibalism and not just

cannibalism? Because it's right after they have sex. With our North American ones, yeah, with our North American ones, they really don't do it hardly at all. Usually the male able to escape with plenty of time. And it really only happens in a laboratory setting where they're constrained to the same jar or something. Then the female will eat the male. And that's why they got famous for that. And that's why they're called Black Widow spiders.

But they really don't do it at a high level compared to other spiders. At least our North American one. There are other ones. You don't mean sex. You mean kill the male. Yeah. But with Brown Widow spiders and the Australian Redback spiders, it is really frequent.

but the difference is that we always kind of assume that the male is like trying to escape and the female eats him. In those spiders, the male actually willingly sacrifices himself to the female after sex. And there's some ideas like behind that, part of the idea is that he can mate with her longer and that he gets to like deposit a bigger load of sperm. The other idea. Still not a fair trade off in my opinion. There's a few people out there that I would make that deal with. Yeah, sure.

The other, yeah, we'll just let people guess who that might be. The other idea is that it gives, I guess we're not going to guess. The other idea is that it gives the female kind of like a really good meal to kick off her pregnancy. She is more likely to produce fertile offspring if she is also eating at the same time. Okay, that transitions us really nicely into. spider sex. The male too is kind of sacrificing himself to give himself a better chance of having offspring. Exactly, which seems kind of, it seems counterintuitive because you would think more mating opportunities would be a better option for that. But these aren't very long-lived spiders

and just finding a mate and having sex and like getting through all that whole process. I think for them is a big win. And so they're kind of just like 50 babies or something too, right? It's Hundreds. Yeah. Thinking about it more, I think it's a good way to go. It's the right choice because otherwise what are you doing? You're just like sitting in the toe of some booty. It's like, what are you even doing with your life anyway?

Eating butterflies and shit. Yeah, have sex and die. I've been there. It's not great. When you said sitting in the toe of some booty, I was like still like in sex mind mode. And I was like, what's Mike like? How does he have all this lingo? I don't know.

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for your business. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com slash small business. Anyway, we brought up sex a little bit with spiders. I want to transition into a more reproductive talk because there's a really interesting kind of courtship display and everything that these spiders do. And you guys know I love reproductive facts

and spiders. It's especially fascinating. And you love courtship. I do love courtship. You're romantic, dude. What's the most romantic thing you did this year? So far. Oh, I don't know.

I'll have to think about that. Put you on the spot. Yeah. But I do like being romantic from time to time. So when a male black widow spider is ready to mate, he spins some silk and he soaks it with sperm. And then he wraps it around some appendages that are called palps that are near his fangs. So if you look at these spiders, they look like little antenna almost by their fangs. And those are called palps.

And he spins this sperm soaked soak around them. Yeah. And then he goes looking for a female. And I read this paper called A Meal or a Mail. The whispers of a Black Widow male do not trigger a predatory response in females. It was written by Samantha Vibert, Catherine Scott, and Gerhardt, Greece. And this paper talks about how a male spider will find a female spider through these complex chemical cues. And then when he approaches her web, he needs to make sure she knows he's there to bone or else she thinks he's prey and she'll eat him.

So it's this really tricky thing for a spider because he's half the size of her. And so he needs to be really careful that he doesn't touch this web and sound like he's an insect. So they use this really cool vibrameter is what it was called that uses lasers. And they looked at the strands of silk that this female's on. I know a vibrometer sounds like it could be a lot of different things. But when a female's in her nest or sorry, in her web, those strands, of silk, they serve as an extension of her sensory system. So she, like, can feel everything that hits that web.

And when the male comes out, they use this little meter thing to measure his vibration frequencies as he's traveling across these strands of silk. And he makes it make this really, like, low humming noise, whereas an insect will make it make these really strong, sharp vibrations. And so she can recognize that it's a male that's approaching rather than an insect that's stuck in her web, which is really, really interesting. Yeah. It's like you either get eaten or you have to do like a sperm dance while tightrope walking across.

It just seems really difficult and precarious. Like if you get in human terms. It's like juggling bowling pins on a unicycle across a tightrope. It's like you either do that or you're going to get eaten. Yeah. And the thing you're approaching is like maybe going to be like the best experience of your life or it's going to like eat you.

It's worth it. Yeah. So he's doing this thing and then once he gets close enough to her and convinces her that he's not immediate prey, he does a little courtship dance and then he does, he throws what's called.

Yeah, they do a little like dance. I like, and then he throws. Like dance right before mating. Yeah, a lot of them do it. It's cool. No, I genuinely like, like, not even like,

I mean, it's funny, but it is like, I like it. It's interesting. Spiders would be so good at doing the robot. They have all those limbs. You think of that? Breakdance. So then another really cool thing he does for a spider?

That's the one. Yeah, they just hang down from their web. Yeah, that's true. They would be good at that. Spin around like freaking crazy. All right. So another thing they do is he has this thing that they call a bright old veil. That's what arachnologists have called it.

And essentially, he takes this little web and he throws it on the female and wraps her up in it real quick. And the idea behind that, and I read this on this blog called Spider Bites. No, like he has a web that he shoots out of his spinneret. Yeah. But he shoots like a legit net catching web. Yes, like a little web. And he spins it around her. And they call it a bridal veil.

And I read this on this blog called Spider Bites that was created by one of those authors, Catherine Scott. She's an arachnologist. And what it is is it's this thin little web, and there's some debate out there over the purpose of this web. But the most common theory is that it restrains the female a bit

while they're mating, and it gives them an easier time depositing his sperm and a better chance of escaping when they're done. Oh, okay. So that's the basic idea of why he does that. It's like a little bit of an insurance policy for him.

I wonder what their field goal percentage is, like if they're pretty accurate, like hitting the female with that web. How many shots they need? Yeah, like, what if he missed and you didn't realize? Who's the stiff curry of Black Widows out there? Yeah.

All right, so she's all tied up. He inserts those pulps that have been wrapped in sperm-soaked silk into her sexual opening, and he fertilizes the eggs that she carries. And after the insemination, he gets the heck out of there. And again, it's important to note that some species they actually sacrifice their bodies after that point. The female spider makes these papery egg sacsack. that can contain hundreds of eggs. And a really cool other thing I learned is that she perfectly deposits each of those

eggs and tries to make them the exact same size. Because if one of her young is like significantly bigger than the others, it will eat the rest of them. Like it'll just eat all of them. So she like they think by design black widows try to make all their eggs the exact same size. That's so cool. Yeah. So a couple other facts.

They prefer to nest near the ground in dark, undisturbed area. is small holes produced by animals around construction openings or woodpiles. Indoor nests are usually in dark undisturbed places like under desks, under furniture, or in a basement. When something does stumble into their web, a prey item, the spider will rush over and venomate the prey and then wrap it in silk. When the prey has died or it's immobile, she then pulses digestive juices all over the prey, which dissolve it into that slurry that we talked about.

And then the spider uses capillary action to suck the liquefied insect into its mouth, which is really cool. That's what Shilob was going to do to Frodo. Slurpy does work, too. Kind of, yeah. Yeah, she just slurps it right up. When confronted with a threat, the initial reaction of a Black Widow spider is to get away as fast as possible. Next, they'll generally flick some silk threads at their threat or they even play dead. Finally, if it's really being pushed, it will bite in defense.

But you really have to kill. convince a black widow to bite you. And that's one of the myths that I wanted to dispel. This is not a spider that's aggressive. This is not a spider that tries to bite people. It does everything it can to avoid biting you. And the people that get bit are people like Jackson, where you slide your shoe into something, it has nowhere to go, or your foot into a shoe.

It has nowhere to go and it decides to bite you. But they really don't like biting. This isn't a bitey spider. So there's actually a professional. professor in the 1930s, who was an old version of coyote Peterson, apparently. He was named Alan Blair, and he decided to force a black widow to bite him to study the effects to see if enough bites from the spider if a human could produce their own immunity. Not coyote, Jack's world of wildlife.

We're going to talk about Jack. Yep, I was going to say. We're going to talk about Jack. The first bite was so painful for this Alan Blair in the 30s that he completely abandoned his experiment and didn't go through with any more bites. And that brings up Jack. He started with Black Widow? Yeah, this guy just wanted to see if they could...

Back in the day, there was like some problems with Black Widows that we're going to talk about. And so he wanted to see if humans could develop immunity to their bites. And like one bite completely made him want to, you know, never do that again. And that's what happened to Jack, too. So in Jeff's episode about the Kings of Sting, we talked about Coyote Peterson. which I'm not a huge Coyote Peterson fan. Jeff was a big fan of Jack's World of Wildlife. I'm neutral on Jack.

That's my guy. Coyote did a video with the Black Widow where it just kind of scurried over him. I was impressed that he didn't force it to bite him. So good for him for not stressing out that Black Widow. Jack decided to make one bite him, pushed it into him. It bit him a bunch of times. He did disclaim to like,

they don't want to bite people. Like, I'm just doing this to show people like not to be afraid. of him. And I will say, cool, seeing, for whatever reason, seeing a black widow like scurry around their arms and stuff gave me the willies more than any other insect or anything

that these guys put on them. And so it bites him and he said that he had the worst pain of any bite that he's ever had. He said that he'll never do another spider bite. He's sticking to insects from now on. He went through like 12 hours of intense pain where he couldn't

stand up. And he didn't film all of it. which to his credit, he didn't film himself, like, rolling around on the ground and whatnot. But he came back and he was like, I didn't film all of this, but I've just been an absolute hell, and I'm done doing this. I'm not doing spiders anymore. So kind of the same as this Alan Blair guy. He had a really funny expression, I feel like, where you could just tell you'd been through hell. Because, like, he gets bit and he's like, oh, whatever, I'm just going to go on my day is normal. Then it's like 12 hours later, he just looks.

so miserable. His hair's like a mess and he kind of has like a little smirky smile that's just like, yeah, I'm an idiot. I do want to reiterate, I'm not a fan of like getting bid by animals for clicks, but I do think for everyone that does it, he is the most ethical out of the ones that I've seen. Okay, we're going to move on from that though because we could talk about that for the longest time. Symptoms of a Black Widow bite include nausea, profuse sweating, severe pain in the abdomen in the back, muscle lakes, hypertension, paralysis of the diaphragm, and in very, very, very rare cases, those symptoms can lead to death. In a review, though, by the National Poison data system of 23,000 reported Black Widow spider bites, which a lot of those probably weren't even Black Widows,

from 2000 and 2008, 65% of patients received minor health effects, required no treatment, 33.5 had a moderate impact that required treatment, and only 1.4% experienced significant effects. No deaths were reported for those eight years. They hardly kill anyone. In the past, when they have, it's generally been older people or children. It's been over a decade since the last death that resulted from a Black Widow bite, I believe it was in 2011. And it was kind of because of mistreatment. Like, they didn't realize it was a Black Widow until too late, and the lady could have been

saved. And then before that, it was 1983 that was the last one. And some of the sources I found say that there's never been a documented case of Black Widow deaths, which I don't agree with because of our next thing we're going to talk about. Are you guys ready to move on to the next thing? Oh, yeah. This is pretty interesting, and I think you guys are going to like this little bit. So in the past, there were a much higher number of bites and deaths from Black Widows. And although there still weren't like a ton considering how many blackwood of spiders there are and how often we come into contact with them a lot of those bites involved men and a lot of those bites were on their junk and there's a reason for that so do you guys have do you have any guesses that you

want to put out right now like a drinking game practical is like jackass before jackass all right like a right of passage i know idea all right So I read this article. Like their underwear was dark? That's finally a good guess. I read an article on IFL science that referenced this. And then there was also a This American Life episode who featured this woman Kelsey Padgett, who was a science journalist that has a really special interest in spiders.

And she said in the years spanning 1950 to 1959, 63 people in the U.S. died from Black Widow Bites. So in nine years in the 50s. Most of them were men, and most of those bites were on their peats. or their testicles. And the thought, the prevailing thought, is that back then outhouses were much more commonly used, and black widows really like to form their webs on a place where they're going to catch a lot of prey, and it's dark and kind of secluded. So a toilet bowl opening was like a perfect spot for them, or they would think it would be perfect, because there's all these flies

coming up from the outhouse bottom, and it's dark, and it's quiet. And so a spider that hasn't really learn their lesson yet might be like, oh, this is a perfect spot for my web. And then what would happen is a guy would sit down on the toilet and his junk would hang down into the web and he would get bitten. So whether the spider either thought that it was like maybe some potential prey that had touched the web or a threat, there was a lot of bites on dudes junk back then. And the last idea is that because that's such a nerve heavy area of your body and that venom attacks nerves, there's a thought that it provided a quicker pathway into your body and

maybe up into your heart even. And so it was like a more lethal place to potentially get bitten by a neurotoxic spider. Anyway, being a man back in the 1950s was so hard. It's good that I learned all this as an adult and not a child or else had probably be dead from like fecal poisoning right now or just like full of rock hard shit. All right. So as bathrooms were moved indoors, those numbers went way down. Okay. That is.

That's really interesting. Wait, when did you say that? The dates of that? 50 to 59. 1900s or 18? Yeah, 1950 to 1950. All right. Interesting.

So I got a couple more. It has like a correlation to penis size now. Yeah. People smaller penises survive more spider. Yeah, it's an evolutionary advantage. All right. So I got a couple other stories. Take comfort.

They've grown 55% in like the last decade or something. What? You see that report? No. I haven't seen that. They're getting big. To be born in the last decade, we're not going. All right.

A couple other stories. Moving on. Crack a Kamen Jack margarita and taste your escape. It's America's number one for a reason. Kaman Jack is a premium malt beverage with flavors. Please drink responsibly. Cayman Jack beverage company, Chicago, Illinois. This one's from the New York Post, which is not a great source.

We've talked about that. But I did see this story in a lot of other places, and for whatever reason, the New York Post did the best job summarizing it. So I'm just going to almost read this one verbatim from there. It's a small article. Three young Bolivian brothers were hospitalized after getting a black widow spider to bite them, thinking it would turn them into Spider-Man. The Marvel-loving siblings, ages 12, 10, and 8,

found a spider while hurting goats and thinking it would give them superhero powers, they prodded it with the stick until it bit each of them in turn. Their mom found them crying. She rushed them to a nearby health center and then they were taken to a nearby hospital. They were transferred

a third time taken to a children's hospital in La Paz. They had fevers, tremors, and muscle pains. They were treated and discharged and all three of them were okay. None of them turned into Spider-Man. No, unfortunately. Shoot. Not yet. Not yet. That's true.

There's a story I saw, and I'm like that statistic I just threw out a 55%, which is completely wrong, I'm sure. Yeah. But anyways, there's a story I just saw of a little kid who was in his apartment building where they lived with his mom. And he took her umbrella and jumped off like the four-store story balcony and hardly even got hurt. but he wanted to be Spider-Man. That's crazy. She said she thinks the umbrella like helped him. Don't.

Okay, anyone out there that's thinking about trying this, don't do it on our account. You can't be Spider-Man. No. Unless. Maybe. Just get a huge umbrella. I guess you can be Spider-Man. All right.

So I got one more story. This one's from Quora. It's going to be our came from Quora because it's actually a pretty good little story. And I couldn't find a lot of other really good. Quora stuff, so we're going to read this story that's from Quora. All right, it's from Quora user Brad Porteous, and I'm going to pretty much read his story because he does a really good job summing it up. He says it was a sunny Sunday morning in the summertime of 2006 in Redwood City, California.

The missus was back east with her gal pals for a weekend of her charging her batteries and reconnecting with old friends. I was holding down the fort with the munchkins, his boys are four and one in three-fours, and in the interest of creating a morning diversion, we took some preparations for a walk in the hills. I grabbed a pair of old shoes from the garage and threw them over my bare feet and continued to charge around the house

to build momentum to get out the door. About a minute later, I realized there was some wiggling in the toes of my right shoes, and I was about to take my shoe off, I felt a prick on the tip of my second toe of my right foot. Not painful, but it got my attention. I took my shoe off on the outside steps and dumped it out,

discovering a jet black inky spider with the body the size of an engorged pee. I told my son to grab his bug catcher, which was nearby, and I dumped the spider into the clear container for inspection. Imagine my horror when I rotated the container and got a glimpse of a distinct reddish-brown hourglass figure on the belly of the black spider. I'm going to kind of sum up some of this other stuff. He calls the hospital to see what they think. They tell him that there was no way a black widow had bitten him,

and the attending physician says that, you know, It's not happening. What? And then the physician starts looking at Google and they're like, wait, actually, let me ask you a few more questions. And he's on the phone with them a little bit longer. He's a what? Yeah, I know. He's on the phone with them a little bit longer.

And he starts to have a cramping in his lower right leg. And at this point, the doctor's like, okay, you need to get medical attention. So they pile into their car and they head to the ER. And he says, 10 minutes later, I walked to the doors of the ER at Sequoia Hospital. in Redwood City, holding the hands of my two boys, along with the bug catcher. 30 minutes ago, this spider bit me on this toe, and now this leg is cramping. Again, all the doctors get really excited, because this is something very novel to them. And he says, by now the cramping had migrated into my groin area, and I was beginning to wonder

what was in store. I was told that an antivenin does exist, but it's kept in Arizona. It's highly toxic, and they don't fly that in unless I was about to die. So my fate was to get jacked up on opiates and survive the onslaught of the neurotoxin from the spider, which would cause tremendous pain and cramping for the next six hours. So he texts his wife, he tells her that he's been bit by a black widow, kind of ruins her vacation, and then they load him up on pain killers and he gets discharged from the hospital, which he says was great.

But then later, he says nights three and four were disasters for him. He says, for some completely unknown reason, I was sweating profusely at night, as in soaking through my sheets and changing my sheets three time on one night and twice the next. Specifically, I was leaking sweat out of my legs. I'd wipe them off and they'd beat up immediately.

It was freaky. Jeez. He also said I was having trouble concentrating or being coherent for five days. Sleep was next to impossible. I was getting worn down. And like his wife was worried that he had brain damage. His doctors switch him over from Vicodin

to value him and he finally gets a decent night's sleep and then like a week later he started to feel normal and he goes on like a cleaning binge around his house to get rid of spiders. Anyway, pretty similar to our first story, dude sticks his foot in a shoe, doesn't check it first, gets bit by a black widow spider. I would say, you know, a thing that I learned in this episode and something that I've tried to do in the past, if you have a shoe that you haven't put on for a long time and it's in like a dark corner of your closet or in your basement or somewhere where a spider may have made it its home give it a little shake before you put it on give it a good shake before you put it on

because that is it doesn't work it can get it out of there it'll at least like disturbed in their web no they like as soon as they feel a threat they'll come down on their web and try and escape if you really shake it good it'll come out um or at least it should but yeah you're right like it's not the perfect if you're really worried about it that one before you've heard that one before Like if you want to be really paranoid about it, get like a shoehorn or something and put it up in there and scrape it out. Yeah, it's not a bad idea. What would Jeff and Mike do? Are we doing that?

We are going to do that. Okay, yeah, I'll save it because I thought of mine just then. But I do want to stress. I want to stress this at the end of all these stories. You really have to push a Black Widow to get bitten. And if you do get bitten, you're almost certainly going to be fine. So much so that, like, they really don't even make anti-venom because people recover from these things. No one really dies from them.

You're probably going to have some pain. It's probably not going to be the best day of your life. But you're going to be okay. And so they're not- Cajun-A. Yeah, worst day of his life. You really got to push him and you just got to really push him to bite. Yeah, exactly.

You have to go after his wife. But you might die. You might. He might kill you. with his weapons of destruction or whatever they say his hands are. So stupid. Anyway, I just want to stress that. You could probably put your hand and grab a Black Widow spider out of its web,

and it's probably not going to bite you. In fact, I watched a lot of videos of people on the internet doing exactly that. They had, like, Jack had to literally pin that spider down onto his arm and push its fangs into his arm to get it to bite him. These are not animals that want to hurt us. They're beautiful animals. They're part of their ecosystem. They do a lot of pest control for us by eating all these other little bugs.

They're just minding their own business. So just check your shoes and check those dark spaces when you're cleaning your garage or whatever. Just be careful. All right. Any questions about Black Widows? How do you feel about people killing them and they find them at their house? I feel okay with it if you find it in your house. But you only even let Jack just let one bite down.

and not even kill it. I said I was okay with that thing of Jack. I just don't like the whole thing. Yeah, I know. I mean, personally, if I found one of my house, I tried catching in a jar and let it go outside, but I don't blame people for not feeling comfortable for doing that. So if you got to kill them, you got to kill them.

They're not in any kind of conservation. Spoiler for a conservation part, they're doing fine. We're not even going to talk about it. They're doing fine. Speaking of babies, how, when a. spider gives birth to all these babies. What is like the survival rate? Do you know anything about that?

I looked into it a little bit. Like a big part of it is whether or not its siblings eat it. Yeah. Like that's one of their main threats is getting eaten by their other siblings. But I'm not sure after that, like what their main threats are. As far as adult spiders go, there are like reptiles, mammals, birds that eat them. They have a fair number of predators and like lizards and whatnot. Their venom doesn't affect them at all.

So they'll just go for them. But yeah, I don't know about the babies I imagine a lot of them die Are they an animal that does better in cities? I don't think they necessarily do better in cities Because we don't really There's not a prey species that they eat That we're like proliferating

It's not like they eat rats But we like create a lot of hiding spots from predators maybe They're not really short on habitat though I don't think we've like really benefited them that much but I don't know, you might be right. When you say, when you ask if they do well in cities, I just imagine a little spider in a suit

in the briefcase sitting on the subway. It's like, do it really well. If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere. Yeah, all right. Like six months later, it's just like a taxi driver. We hate it. Calling his parents. Yeah.

Okay. So we're going to get into our categories. I didn't include quite as many in this episode because I knew we had a lot of biology and some fun stories. But we're going to start with pop culture because there are a lot of Black Widows. You didn't prep, too. Okay, great. Ooh.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm all for an audible. Let's start with pop culture, though. I'm going to go first. I really loved season four of Stranger Things. I think it was my favorite season of all of them. And the big bad and stranger things, Vecna, there's like spoilers, part where it looks at his passed and as a kid he was obsessed with black widow spiders and then you realize there's kind of

been some black widow imagery throughout the show or spider imagery at least and that's my pick and my shout out pick is my black widow pog that I had when I was into pox sweet dude is it a slammer I'm just kidding okay it was a slamer oh that's so sweet that was a good pog yeah it was heavy I don't understand why the rules with pogs like why didn't everyone just get that heaviest slammer and just knock everyone's pogs. Probably why it's not popular anyway. Yeah, yeah. That's a really good pick.

I'm going to give you props, good pick. We had a couple in our neighborhood, Jeff, that just went all in on pogs. Like they sold pogs out of their garage. Like adult. Yeah, and they just had like boxes and boxes of pox. I wonder how they're doing. All right. It's too bad they didn't do that with Pokemon.

Yeah. Be billionaires. Mike? I don't know if this is a black widow. I kind of think it is. Miss Spider from James and the Giant Peach. Yeah, I think she is. Kind of black widowish.

I have like a pretty major crush on her, thus continuing the trend of all of my childhood crushes being animals, basically, with gadget and, well, whatever. Yeah. She's great, though. Mr. Centipede, always trying to get with her. Good taste, dude. She's cool, though.

She's one of the first books I ever read. That's a good pick. I like that. Roll doll. Yeah. Cool. He's been in the news recently. I have to litigate that right now.

I'm going with Vera Rensky. Okay. I could be saying the last name wrong. Yeah. I mean, she's in my Mount Rush more of serial killers. Okay. She's dubbed the Black Widow and was a Romanian serial killer, charged with poisoning 35 individuals. including her two husbands, multiple lovers, her son, and she used arsenic in the 1920s.

Nice. So she's just given arsenic to everyone. They probably deserved it. The kid, you think? Yeah, why not? Maybe she just got a little caught up for him. Yeah, no, she's like, I mean, it's just like a profession dominated by males. Yeah.

So I feel like when a female excels at it, you kind of like to see a woman excel in serial killing. Yeah, I agree. Who else is on your Mount Rushmore, just out of morbid curiosity? Yeah, I mean, you got to have Bundy on there. Bundy and Dahmer, for sure, on there. Yeah, probably Dahmer. And then that fish, dude. Oh, Albert Fish.

He's a bad one. Maybe Zodiac, though. It's tough. Yeah, he never really got caught. You know, you get some points. for that the Green River Green River Killer is up there Who's that

Lady Bathory or whatever She just bathed in the blood of her victims Oh I don't know but I like that She might be in there for me We can make a whole episode out of this one We should make a podcast about your favorite Ripper Jack the Ripper Yeah Jack the Ripper

That's a good one I mean we'll call it my favorite serial killer I feel like a lot of like the tyrants Get a pass Yeah I know it's like killed like six million people or something. Right.

Genghis Khan. All right. Okay, let's move on. What would Mike do? But he just made it legal. We all have that dream trip. We've been wishing we could go on. But too often life or usually price gets in the way.

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I don't even tie the laces. When I said that, I just meant like a dusty old parachute. Oh, I'm not. I'm just saying personally, if there's a spider in my shoe, I'm not going to see it. Yeah. I'm not saying your advice is wrong. So I'm just going to like kick the wall as hard as I can with both feet. I was actually going to recommend that.

So that's a good thing. I just hope I smush it if there's one in there. I like that. Mm, Mike? Yeah, I'm just going to put my shoes on super hard every time from now on. Pretty much the same. You both pretty much went the direction I was going to say. It's like, not a terrible idea if you're a little nervous about a pair of shoes,

like maybe just like put your foot forward and like mush your toes around and try and kill it before it can bite you. But if you, I'm going to talk more about what you should do if you do get bitten by a Black Widow. Could wear crocs. Just wear crocs. Just wear crocs exclusively. Or like put a little bug in there, see if it wants to eat it. Just always carry around some bugs, some flies. Just be its friend.

All right, so this is from OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. They have a fact sheet on Black Widows and what you should do if you're bitten by a Black Widow. They talked about cleaning the bite area with soap and water, applying ice to the bite area to slow the absorption of venom. I don't know if either of those actually do anything with Black Widows. I would imagine they don't. So I'm saying that advice, but it's what I found. I don't think that actually is going to really help. Elevate the extremity, capture the spider if you're able to safely,

or at least identify it so you know what it is, and then get to medical attention. Really, that's all you can do. But so one of the things I read from like a trusted source that I didn't like that I mentioned was on like National Geographic on their webpage for Black Widows and a bunch of other really good webpages. they said that Black Widow Venom is more potent than Rattlesnake venom. It is, but that's very misleading because it makes you think,

oh, if I get bit by a Black Widow, it's worse than getting bit by a rattlesnake. That's not true. A rattlesnake delivers so much more venom that you're in much more trouble if you get bit by a rattlesnake than by a Black Widow. If a Black Widow delivered the amount of venom that a rattlesnake does, we would die from them all the time. You'd probably die within minutes, but it's apples and oranges because it's also a totally different type of venom. So don't believe that if you read it. If you get bit by a Black Widow, calmly go get medical attention. You're going to be fine.

You're not going to die. You're going to be okay. You're just going to be okay. You might experience some pain. You'll have a good story to tell for the rest of your life, but you're going to be okay. Just go to the hospital and get it checked out. Do you think a good preventative measure would be? to remove your bottom ribs in case you get bit on the junk.

No, I don't think so. Being Marilynne Manson feels pretty safe. I remember when that was like the first big gossip that spread before any of us had the internet or social media or anything? And somehow we still all heard that. It's got to be true, dude. It's not like, it's not like now where you could like fact check it either. It's just like, you believe everything. He's a weird dude.

He sucks. Was the, uh, yeah, he does. Was the rumor that Trinity from the Matrix died? Was that a thing that happened up in Montana for you guys? That was a big rumor in. I didn't get that one. Huh. But you were also plugged into all the Matrix rumors.

Wait, Will Ferrell? There was a rumor he died? Yeah. What the heck? It was just because of his role in wedding crashers where he, like, talks about the, like, the person's funeral and how he died in, like, a skydiving. accident, but then everyone was saying he died in a skydiving

accident and the whole school believed it. Whoa. That was a local rumor and Jeff's like middle school. Okay. I hadn't heard that one. I got a new category for you guys

and it's just for this episode. This category is called Scarlett Johansson or a Black Widow spider. We can keep this one going. Scarlett Johansson's famous for playing Black Widow and the Marvel movies. So I'm going to give you guys some facts and you guys have to tell me if I'm talking about the actress Scarlet Johansen or a Black Widow Spider.

Okay. Yeah. This thing, whether it's Scarlet, Scarjo or a Black Widow spider, was the world's highest paid actress in 2018 and 2019. Spider. What's the nickname for Scarjo? Scarjo. Scarjo. Correct. That was Scarlet Johansson. That was an easy one. All right. This was nominated for best actress in a comedy or musical for Lost in Translation. Scarja. Correct.

All right. We got the easy ones out of the way. This one will lay roughly 200 eggs at a time. Black Widow's fighting. Okay. So far, Jeff, you're three for three. Mike? Are you going to play?

I'm glad Jeff's on my side of this man. All right. Climate change has increased their range. I mean. I think there's both of them probably. Yeah, right? I feel like Scarjo probably likes warmer weather. She's probably like, I'm going Scarjo again.

Mike, what are you answering for that one? Ooh. I'll go a spider. It is the spider. I had the spider in mind for that one. This, I objected. Either Black Widow or Scarjo. I think Scarjo is getting out to colder places with this warmer climate.

This was featured in the Home Alone series of movies. Was it? The spider? Tell me which one. That's my answer. That's the spider. Spider?

Jeff, what do you say? Or wait. I'm saying Scarjo. It's Scarjo. What the heck? She was in Home Alone 3. Yep. All right.

It's getting a little harder. It's the tarantula I was in Home Alone. Ooh. You tricked me. This one bites only when threatened. That's both. Okay. I'm not sure, actually.

I'm not sure about Scarjo. But definitely the Black Widow Spite. I think it's out of the question. The Black Widow superhero bites when threatened. Okay. This one has poor eyesight. Black Widow spider. Scarjo.

Black Widow spider. Couldn't find anything about Scarjo having poor eyesight. I looked pretty hard. Okay. This one mates with a less attractive partner. Oh, that's subjective. Scarjo. Both of them.

Both of them do. All right. Shout out to call on Jost. Scarjo's married to the guy that, yeah. I think he would happily say that she's more attractive than him. All right. That is subjective, though. That's like the statue of David's the only thing that could be on her love.

That's true. Just any male is going to be less attractive. No arms. Yeah. All right. No. Never mind. Sorry.

I'm getting my classical artwork mixed up. That's it. That's it for our new game. I hope you guys liked it. You know, we're workshopping things around here. So there you go. No, that's fun. Bring it back.

A lot easier than Jeff. It wasn't very hard. All right, Jeff, you said you had a new category for us. What is it? It's not new. Oh, okay. I just want to see how many types of spiders you can name in 20 seconds. Of any spider?

Yeah. Okay. I'm going to put the number at 16. We're 15 and a half, and I think we should bet a billion dollars, Mike. A billion? Yeah. Okay. How much time are we giving him?

22 seconds. Wait, before we do this one, can I, like, if I'm, like, talking about tarantulas, can I go into species of tarantulas? Or is a tarantula, like, one spider? Like, how many types of tarantula? I'm saying, like, how in the weeds can I get? Okay. If it's, like, a different animal, it counts.

Okay. Okay, so lay out the parameters again. 22 seconds, 15 and a half, it's just how many types of spider he can name. $1 billion. So that basically means, oh, man. Like, we won't ever pay. Like, if you ever become a billionaire, you will be broke because you'll owe it all to me and vice versa. Can't we just bet another night of consummating our marriage?

All right. How many spiders? Um, over. 15 and a half in how many seconds? 22 seconds. 22. Okay, that's going to be a good one. One billion dollars.

Yep, deal. But we can set up a monthly payment plan. Okay, that's fair. Quarter. But it transfers on if we ever have kids. Okay. Uh, you ready, Wes? Yeah, I'm ready.

Okay. Ready, set, go. Black Widow Spider, Brown Widow Spider, Redback Spider, Huntsman Spider, Wolf Spider, Hobo Spider, Hobo Spider, Brown recluse spider Orbweave spider Australian Funnelweb, Sydney Funnel Web Crab spider House spider

Giant or Goliath bird eater Tarantula Time No, that was close How many was that? How many did I get? Oh shit, I thought I'd be able to get that one. I thought you'd do more tarantulas after asking me

I was going to and then I was having a hard time And I didn't want to get bogged down It is kind of a like, longer name for a spider. Okay, hold on. I'm making my first payment right now. I have a billion dollars. Send me like one quarter.

One quarter a year. Okay. All right. Or if you get a billion dollars, you could do like, what's your Venmo handle for everyone, listen? Oh, you might as well give it out. Mine's Wesley dash Larson. Yeah, Jeff dash Larson.

Okay. Let's do some listener questions. You paid it. How much do you pay you? Or do you put a note? Spider-Bet. How much? A quarter.

Perfect. All right. It's good for the year. Let's do some listener questions. Let's start with those subscriber questions, Mike. Okay, so first question, this is from Allie. And they ask, if you could take over the body of any living person for a day, who would it be? I think I would do, I think I'd be Elon Musk.

I'd immediately donate all of my money and stock options to a conservation organization. And then I would kill myself. Oh, geez. In a Tesla. You just got to put on autopilot. Yeah. Easy. Yeah, I want to be, I think I want to be Jonathan Majors.

Oh, he's real weird. See, like, what it's like, how much weight I can lift and, how strong I am. Yeah. I think if you kill yourself in the body of the other person, you die. I think that's the rule. Worth it. Okay.

Just making sure. So when I travel, or I guess really when I go anywhere, I sometimes get that really weird feeling where it just, I become cognizant of life happening outside of my, like, sphere of experiencing it. Your room. Yeah, my room. But like, I remember feeling a really distinct. There's actually a word for it.

It's called saundering when you kind of like consciously recognize that other people have a full life full of experiences outside of your own. And I remember I was at this like weird little bed and breakfast a couple hours outside of Beijing right by the Great Wall of China. And I was just like, the thought struck me. I was like, what is the day to day life like for these people? It's just so foreign and different from my own. So like them or maybe like just LeBron James Yeah I feel like you don't become them You just like live in them as a ghost or something

Do you control them or you just kind of along for the ride So you don't get to experience their memories The next day you like experienced what they experienced Oh okay then yeah So you don't inherit all their memories and all their Yeah yeah that's kind of how I viewed it too Okay Or else yeah fine you know if I just spend all his money

I don't have to get rid of it too Speaking of serial killers. Well, I don't think you get control over. Because I'd like to hang out. Oh, did we? What the heck? He was in my Mount Rushmore. Yeah.

No, they think he's dead. They think he's dead. Oh, my bad. Just someone's still at large that's really like no one knows who they are. I picked that. So you would know. Yeah. Like John Bonae Ramsey's killer.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. But then you would feel like pressure to like go kill him. Or like solve the case and you wouldn't, you wouldn't, if you told the cops, Like, I know who it is. He knew who the Zodiac Killer was and he's killing people. You wouldn't feel pressure to go kill him. I know.

I would report compelling evidence to the authorities. What's the evidence, though? What are they going to believe? I just pointed him in the right direction. Oh, and have it in his body for a day? Well, I'm not going to go just kill a person because then I'm on the hook for killing just a person. No one knows who they were. I'd kill the Zodiac Killer.

Yeah, you would do it. You're a coward. I'm not a coward. I've proved it to you. All right. Yeah, all those people you've gone out and killed. No, but I think I could kill the Zodiac Killer and sleep like a baby that night. Whatever, dude, you're like 5'2.

He would body slam you, dude. He's not going to get enough physical alteration with him. Mike's so mad that he would kill the Zodiac killer. I'm not 5-2, Mike. All right, next question. We're just going to fight about this one some more. This one is from Colby. They ask, what are both your ugliest and least favorite animals on the planet?

And we've kind of answered this before. So we're putting on the parameter that it has to be larger than a loaf of bread. Jeff suggested that because we always come back to just like creepy little weird bugs. Yeah. So I'll go first. I don't like looking at elephant seals, really at all. I love elephant seals. They're pretty ugly.

Okay. Wow. My answer is ocean isopods, like the giant isopods they find at the bottom of the ocean. Like you remember, again, I'm bringing it up again, that Peter Jackson King Kong scene where all those little weird bugs come out and get them. The ones that have like, they look like potato bugs almost, but they're like cream colored. Those actually live at the bottom of the ocean and they're really gross looking. And some people just love them, but I think they're really disgusting. People love those?

Yeah. So that's what I'm getting rid of. Well, what were they doing up on the island if they were in the sea? Are we getting rid of them? Are we just saying what we don't like that? No, we just don't get. All right, sorry. They're at the bottom of the ocean, do you?

I know. I don't know. I don't know. They're just doing it. They're doing their thing. I don't want to get rid of them. I kind of forgot to prep this one and all I can think of right now is a blobfish. Oh, I love blobs.

But I like, they're ugly. They're super ugly. But I don't, they're not my least favorite. They're just what I would say are like maybe the ugliest. All right. That's his knee jerk answer. We'll take it. From Retro.

What is your favorite Lord of the Rings video game? There's is Conquest. And second question, what's everyone's favorite species of shark? Mine was Shadow of War, and my favorite species of shark is the Great White Shark. Yeah. I think Great White Shark. Maco Sharks are really growing on me. They're really, like, metallic-looking, super fast.

I don't know. They're just really cool-looking sharks. Lord of the Rings is the Third Age for me, though. It's like a turn-based, almost like JRP, stylized. game. I thought that was really, really great. Yeah, I'd go Shadow of War. I loved, like, making them all your little, like, slaves or whatever, the orcs and the orcs. Yeah. And then, I would say, whale shark. Okay. Easily. Cool. Well, thanks for the patron questions. Jeff, you want to do some listener ones? Yeah, thanks, subscribers, patrons. Yeah. That's the benefit to

Patreon. You get to ask some questions. Hell yeah, brother. Lonesome Levi asked, Hey Jeff, what's the big deal with the Mona Lisa? I don't know. I'm curious about that, too. I don't know what the big deal is. You don't? No.

Huh. I saw that on your story, and it was surprising to me, because I feel like the thing that I learned about the Mona Lisa is that, like, people can't replicate the, like, look in her eyes and the fact that she looks like she's smiling in some angles and she doesn't and others. What she's smiling about? I don't know. But like, I read about it once.

And people say that it's like this untouchable piece of art because it's like you're like you can't replicate it. So I think that's why it's like. I feel like if you like want to be an art critic, you'd say like she's smiling, but you know when you really stare it's a deep sadness that you can just tell. That's why I could be an art critic.

I get it though. Mike. Aesthetically it's like not as pretty of a painting as some other. Do you think it's like a top 10 painting ever? Oh, without a doubt. I think it's number one. Sure. It's your favorite painting?

It's not my favorite. But I think like when it comes to like skill and fame and everything, I would say it's number one. Well, fame that is. Historical import and all that. Yeah. What were you going to say, Mike? It just looks like her smile, maybe Da Vinci just told like kind of a bad joke and she's just politely, you know, like, uh, huh. Yeah.

Or like she farted and like knows he's about to smell it. I can't remember what it was that I read that made me appreciate it so much. But they talked about the nuance of it and how the brush strokes and everything. He spent like 17 years or something. Yeah. And it's just like insane the amount of work that went into it. But I will, like I've been in the Sistine Chapel and that to me was like much cooler. I've never seen the Mona Lisa.

But like, yeah, I don't know. I don't think it's. I don't know. I'm not impressed by it. That's the one that they burned up in Glass Onion, right? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't like that movie.

I know that's not what we're talking about here. I thought it was actually like really, really bad. Yeah. But whatever. That finale was just like, wait, so that's how they get it? Yeah. They're on the island. No, but I want to give my perspective on it.

Like, I just think I think that I'm not a good enough artist or like art expert to give the details of why it's so good. Yeah. So I'm just kind of looking at it, you know, and I'm like, no, I like all of Van Gogh stuff more. I like Monet more. You know, I think they- That's fine. That's your preference. It's better. And like, I heard that when it got stolen, it became like way more famous and that's what like made it the most famous painting.

Yeah. But, you know, that's the beauty of art. It's all subjective. It is. It's all subjective. There's art that I never thought would affect me that I've had like emotional reaction looking at. So I never- I never understood that until I like sat in front of some of those pieces and I was like

Wow, I'm actually like feeling something really Yeah, when I went to the Met for the first time in New York It's an emotional experience then you it's from stuff you just don't even you can't even Articulate why you're feeling that way But when you see stuff in person it's completely different than looking at like a JPEG online Yeah, yeah all right Let's move on What's your face-off safe word so you know Jeff isn't actually Nicholas Cage?

Oh, that's from August 6thus. How do you guys know I'm who I am? I don't know, I don't know, I guess. I just have you try to say Svalbard maybe? Yeah. What was their safe word again? What did he say to his kid? Or he, like, touched his kid's face in a really weird.

Oh, that's so weird. kind of wiped his waist. He didn't have like a safe word thing. Yeah, it was just that weird touch. Because like his wife banged the bad guy still. Yeah. That movie's so good. Needed it.

There's so many layers to that. Different safe word for that night. Now that's art. I'm not, I'm not acknowledging that. Bailey Mockler asked, can sperm whales actually kill humans with their click? I don't think so.

Oh, I've heard that before. Do you know what that means? I think they're saying like a sonic sound that they send. It's so loud that it like ruptures your ears and brain. Yeah, maybe they could rupture an eardrum or something, but I don't think it could kill a person. I'd be surprised. But, you know, we're going to do a sperm whale episode at some point and we're going to talk about the whale ship Essex. And when we do that, I will figure that out.

That's my promise to you. Grace Alden says, should you be weary, should you be weary about using fragrance, product before going into the wilderness. Wary, probably. Yeah, probably wary. It could be either, I guess. But yeah, probably wary. You, like, I guess from a bear context,

any kind of unnatural scent could potentially attract a bear, but they've done some studies on that sort of thing. And you don't want to have, like, really fragrant things in your tent with you. But if you're just going on a hike or something, you don't really have to worry about. It's not going to, like, pull a bear in. What it could do is if you have a fragrant. a bear that's already curious in what you are and then it comes in and smells those things,

it might make it even more curious. But that's more in like a campsite situation or something like that. So I would say in a campsite in the backcountry, do whatever you can to eliminate any unnatural scents, even some natural ones. But if you're just going for a hike or something, you don't really have to worry about it. Well, what about when you went to British Columbia and you were all wearing Dior. And all the bears came up to smell you guys. We weren't wearing any Dior, but they didn't give me a single sample from that. They didn't even give you any Dior?

No, come on. I didn't get anything. Yeah. Well, you got money, though, that could purchase it. I did get probably enough money to buy one Dior. All right. What was the thing with that, too? Like you did all the shooting, but then all the Johnny Depp stuff came out right after and he was like the voice for it or something.

No, like the main, yeah, that, which I'm not a fan of his. And then also the main thing was the fragrance. It was called salvage. And when they released the second round of it, they did it with like some Native American imagery, which like it was a French company. And I think they just didn't really understand. They definitely should have. That's not an excuse. but like it was it was dumb and they got a lot of flack for it which they should have but luckily

the piece that I did with them had nothing like that there wasn't any kind of it was just about you know why I love bears and yeah yeah you know I was I thought it was a really cool video actually people should watch it like it is really pretty um but I've been like going through macy's a few times recently and I've been like paying more attention to the clone and some of those names are so funny. They're like bad boy. Yeah. Yeah. Do you guys wear cologne at all?

No. I bought some aqua du jour or whatever when I was in college and I still have some of that bottle. From college? Yeah, from like 15 years later or something. I would wear Paxons in high school. There's like Chiera or something. I remember when Nike released a fragrance, a cologne, like back when we were really little, me and all my friends bought it. We were probably like, I don't know, fourth grade.

sweat and just doused each other in it. I actually did. I just bought one called Hefe. Oh, nice. Of course you did. I kind of like the idea of Cologne. Can't wait to smell you. Like just having like, I don't know, I just think it's kind of fun to have like different

fragrances and smell nice. I just like they never smell that good. Yeah, usually just like overwhelms your senses. I took one spray of a sample one at Macy's. Uh-huh. And the people I was with, like, we're just coughing behind me for a few minutes. What's the tip? It shouldn't announce itself.

It should be discovered or whatever. Ooh, that's nice. Yeah, so everyone put on less than you think because you don't want to. Another layer in mic. All by, like, compliments where it's been like, you smell nice, it's been like my laundry detergent on my t-shirt. Yeah, seriously. Or like my old spice deodorant or something. They'll be like, what are you wearing?

and I'm like, I don't need to have deodorant. Downing, softener, fabric softener. All right. Jeff's got a five-star review that he wants to read. You guys, really quick, before he reads it, if you like the podcast, you want to write us a review on Apple Podcasts, helps us out a lot, makes us feel really good. Every once in a while we like to read one on the show because we do really enjoy it.

So, Jeff. Yeah, I got a two-fer. All right. This one's from John Wick Dog. John Wick's Dog. I've never seen the John Wick movies, but thanks to this podcast, I feel like I have. You know if you know. Was that the title of the review or was that the reviewer?

The title is John Wick's dog. Okay. And that's the review. I think it's because my dog food ad reads. Yeah. I'm talking about I want John Wick's dog. All right. And then another one.

Jeff is an idiot. Jeff is an idiot and Wes makes me sound smart when I repeat all of his animal facts. Also, there's Mike. Oh, like five stars. That one was five stars. If I get mentioned, I count it as a win. All right. Thanks, guys.

Even though that last one, you know, whatever. Like it. No, it's a good one. No, I'm good with it, you know. I think it takes intelligence to come up with, like, stupid stuff. I agree. That makes sense. You're not going to get any argument on your intelligence from the two of us.

Like, I'm so smart that I can, like, be an idiot. You know what, that's a good point. We're all smart in different ways. And I think you're one of the more clever people I've ever been in my life. It takes a certain kind of intelligence to be as funny as Jeff is. So don't let it fool you. I am pretty dumb sometimes, do that. All right.

Yeah, I don't know where my wallet is for the last two days. For no good reason. That's very normal. All right. So we're going to do our claw rating. Thanks guys again for those five-star reviews. Give us a five-star review. We might read it.

Do it? All right. Claw rating. We don't need to do conservation. They're doing just fine. But I'm going to go for my claw rating. I'm going to say six claws. This is probably the spider that when I see in North America I get the most excited about.

I really think they're cool looking. I like that they're potentially dangerous. but I'm not a particular huge fan of spiders. I'm not like necessarily more afraid of spiders than the next guy, but I don't really love one of spiders on me or something. I'll pick up a tarantula though or something like that. But yeah, I don't know. So that's why they get a six.

That's why they're not higher. But for spiders, I like them quite a bit. Yeah. They got those big old butts, right? That gives them a couple points, right? Yeah. I'll go seven. They're caked up.

Double cheeking on a Tuesday I like spiders There's just kind of an element of danger associated with them Whether that's fair or not I just think that's kind of a cool thing Yeah seven cool I'm thinking I'm having a hard time I'm thinking eight or nine

Wow they might be my favorite spider is why Yeah Like there's that one really cute colorful one With like the big beady eyes that I like The peacock jump in like huh Peacock jumping spider. Yeah, yeah, peacock jumping spider. It's between these two.

And in like media, like Black Widows, just such a cool name for things. Yeah. And like, they just have like such a cool design. So like, I'm going to go 93 and then eight. Oh, cool. All right. Honestly, those are both higher than I thought.

It almost made me want to bump them up, but I'm a stick with six for now. But for spiders, I do like them quite a bit. I think I like tornadoes. How many spiders do you like more than Black Widow? I like the little jumping spiders that are on. the wall sometimes. I like the peacock one more. I like tarantulas more. I like the big fuzzy tarantulas a lot. Yeah. So I'm going to pick those over it, but they're probably my favorite,

like, dangerous North American spider. Oh, and I'm just going to throw in 4.45 for box jellyfish. I don't think I gave them a score. Okay. Good catch. Yeah. People are keeping track of that. People are getting a number. People have been mad. I lost a lot of following. Jeff's Animal Rankings channel and our Discord server has been going nuts. Yeah. All right, everyone.

Thanks guys for tuning in. For all you arachnophobes out there, hopefully you made it through the episode. I think you can take some comfort in knowing that a spider that maybe you were pretty afraid of is actually really not a threat, not something that you have to worry about. An important player in your local ecosystem around your house

and just a really cool animal that we can really appreciate. And yeah, anyway, thanks for tuning in. Love you guys. Yep. Love you. See you next time. Bye.