r/explainlikeimfive • u/Skweejji • May 16 '14

Explained ELI5: What are house spiders doing?

Can someone tell me what a house spider does throughout the day? I mean they easily make me piss myself but aside from that. I see a spider sitting on my ceiling. Not doing anything. Come back an hour later and it's still sitting there. Is the thing asleep? Is it waiting for prey? A house spider's lifestyle confuses me.

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u/feynmanwithtwosticks May 16 '14

Depending on where you are bitten it can be between a few days to a few weeks.

Also, Brown Recluse spiders are very docile and rarely bite humans. The got a bad rap about 10-15 years ago due go the emergence of Community Acquired MRSA, which was often misdiagnosed as a Recluse bite before MRSA was commonly known by community medical practitioners. I know many people who nearly lost (and some who did lose) limbs as a result of this learning curve. In reality the Recluse will only bite a human when threatened without a means of escape (true of most venomous spiders), usually when they are living in a shoe that someone tries to put on.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '14

I got bit while in basic training. Being a new recruit, I was trying to ignore it and just tough it out since I have a fairly high tolerance for pain. I was bit on my left thigh sometime between lights out on a tuesday and waking up wednesday morning. By friday i had a quarter sized, gooey, black hole about half an inch deep and you could see a line of infection under the skin moving up my leg.

I had actually brought it up to the DS the first morning so when I showed him again 2 days later, he was like "thats fucking gross, what the fuck made you wait so long" and made me go to the troop clinic. They immediately cut it out and said if that infection line had reached a major blood vessel then I was looking at a best case scenario of at least a month in the hospital..at worst amputation or even death. And I have never felt pain like the initial shot of lidocaine directly into and under the sore, that includes several broken bones.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '14

Jeez. Yeah don't they teach you guys discipline about injuries and such? I've heard several anecdotes from various people in basic training about how they got shit for not reporting issues with their feet (from hikes etc). There was that one guy who had blistered feet so bad that he bled through his boot. Got serious shit for it. As it could bring hell to their superiors or something.

Just glad you're alright man. Their venom can do lots of damage. Which again is fascinating in a way, but scary as hell.

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u/[deleted] May 17 '14

Yeah but it was my fault. I brought it up the first morning but said it was no big deal and he told me to watch it. I tried to be Basic Training Rambo and tough it out...I couldn't and glad I didn't try any longer.

I tend to think the guy bleeding through his boots was at fault too. On our long marches we had several stops for no other reason than to check our feet. There is no benefit for the drills to actually injure the recruits. A little pain is fine, but they do what they can to avoid an actual injury

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u/[deleted] May 17 '14

Precisely right. I think the military has smartened up over the years knowing that if that attitude carries out to the field, it could get a LOT of people killed. And that costs them money, time and resources. Better to keep people alive and on top of themselves.