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A friend sent me a news story entitled: "Venomous Spiders of Unknown Origin Take Over Indian Town." I won't encourage the news aggregator responsible for the sensationalist and nonsensical headline, instead I'll link to the Times of India story with a different, equally nonsensical headline, complete with scare quotes around the words "Tarantula" and "kill": ‘Tarantulas’ invade Assam town, ‘kill’ two
Okay, deep breath. So sorry that two innocent people have died in whatever happened in this place. First some pedantry: all spiders are venomous, very few are equipped to bite humans, relatively few of those actually cause harm in the extremely rare case that they do. Second, "take over?" "invade?" Are these spiders from outer space?
No, they may be from Australia, however, which may be worse. The famous Australian funnel web spider (are you out there![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wirrrn?) is aggressive and has a dangerous bite, and looks sufficiently tarantula-like to be called a "tarantula," as long as we understand the quotes to mean "not really." How then to explain the quotes around the word "kill?" That's usually a cut-and-dried situation, unless the headline writer was alluding to the victims' already living their next lives (either as spiders or science journalists, depending on their karma). Sorry, I hate to be making light of these poor people, one of whom was a six year old child. The story does offer some clarity in this paragraph:
"We cannot say for sure that the fatalities were due to the venom; it could have been because of allergic reaction to the venom, which triggered cardiac arrest in both the victims. But all the bite patients first went to witch doctors, who cut open their wounds with razors, drained out blood and burnt it. That could have also made them sick. Also, we didn't administer any antivenin dose, as we were not sure if the spider was venomous," says Dr Anil Phatowali, superintendent, Sadiya Civil Hospital.
He adds that the hospital is ill-equipped to handle crises due to manpower crunch, erratic power supply and equipment shortage.
So here we have a tragedy exacerbated by poverty and extremely questionable traditional medicine practices, and possibly allergies. The mystery remains: where did the spiders come from, why are there so many of them, and what species are they dealing with? Authorities apparently have at least one spider in hand (and if this is an "invasion" of some scale, it shouldn't be hard to get more) then it's a matter of getting a picture of them up on the internet.
I was sent this story via twitter, where I've been trying to crowd-source a title for my hypothetical new podcast; I was honestly planning to do much of the first podcast on the subject of spider bites. Still not a bad idea.
My new title idea, to run by you all, is "The Species of Least Concern Podcast."
I loved it a few hours ago when I was caffeinated, now I'm not so sure. Probably need more caffeine.
Okay, deep breath. So sorry that two innocent people have died in whatever happened in this place. First some pedantry: all spiders are venomous, very few are equipped to bite humans, relatively few of those actually cause harm in the extremely rare case that they do. Second, "take over?" "invade?" Are these spiders from outer space?
No, they may be from Australia, however, which may be worse. The famous Australian funnel web spider (are you out there
wirrrn?) is aggressive and has a dangerous bite, and looks sufficiently tarantula-like to be called a "tarantula," as long as we understand the quotes to mean "not really." How then to explain the quotes around the word "kill?" That's usually a cut-and-dried situation, unless the headline writer was alluding to the victims' already living their next lives (either as spiders or science journalists, depending on their karma). Sorry, I hate to be making light of these poor people, one of whom was a six year old child. The story does offer some clarity in this paragraph:"We cannot say for sure that the fatalities were due to the venom; it could have been because of allergic reaction to the venom, which triggered cardiac arrest in both the victims. But all the bite patients first went to witch doctors, who cut open their wounds with razors, drained out blood and burnt it. That could have also made them sick. Also, we didn't administer any antivenin dose, as we were not sure if the spider was venomous," says Dr Anil Phatowali, superintendent, Sadiya Civil Hospital.
He adds that the hospital is ill-equipped to handle crises due to manpower crunch, erratic power supply and equipment shortage.
So here we have a tragedy exacerbated by poverty and extremely questionable traditional medicine practices, and possibly allergies. The mystery remains: where did the spiders come from, why are there so many of them, and what species are they dealing with? Authorities apparently have at least one spider in hand (and if this is an "invasion" of some scale, it shouldn't be hard to get more) then it's a matter of getting a picture of them up on the internet.
I was sent this story via twitter, where I've been trying to crowd-source a title for my hypothetical new podcast; I was honestly planning to do much of the first podcast on the subject of spider bites. Still not a bad idea.
My new title idea, to run by you all, is "The Species of Least Concern Podcast."
I loved it a few hours ago when I was caffeinated, now I'm not so sure. Probably need more caffeine.
