Reality bites

A white tailed spider. Photo / Supplied

If the court pleases, we shall begin with the horror stories. Three years ago, Wayne Carroll was lying in his family's tent on a summer's afternoon in remote Whatuwhiwhi, on Northland's Karikari Peninsula.

The heat of day had driven him in, and once reclined on the tent's mattress bed, he fancied a slumber, though it was just 3pm. As he lay looking up and waiting for sleep, he realised he wasn't the only one in the tent. Above him was a spider, crawling across the fabric. "Oh yeah, typical," he thought, perhaps a little atypically, though it was true enough. And off to sleep he drifted. It was only after the 46-year-old teacher opened his eyes that he became aware of two welts on his calf.

Rather unwisely, he scratched them before sitting up and noticing a spider squashed on the bedding. "That's gross," he thought, and this, too, was true. Within a couple of days the bites' redness was spreading.

After arriving home in Whangarei he soon found he couldn't get upstairs. The following day he was hallucinating the ceiling tiles flying and he "felt like a space cadet on drugs or something". Off to hospital he went. It would be two years, Carroll says, before he fully recovered.

In the first three months he spent 29 days in hospital. Doctors tried four different antibiotics. He lost a whole term of teaching. "It was only after the two year mark that I could walk to The Warehouse in Whangarei without dragging my leg like the Hunchback of Notre Dame ..."

After surgery, the hole in Jill Iraia's abdomen was roughly the size of the old 50c piece. The poisoned flesh was cut out last January and the wound left open to heal, apparently standard practice. It was three weeks before she felt okay, though even then it still hurt to sit up. Iraia, too, had been in bed when the spider bit.

The 40-year-old from Dannemora in east Auckland isn't sure if it was in her pyjamas and she'd rolled on it just before it struck. But she felt it bite and found it squashed. The stinging sensation went away quickly, but by the next day there was a reddish rash and the day after that a hard lump had formed. Her doctor prescribed antibiotics but they were next to useless. Fluid formed under the lump and it started to protrude. "It was awful and so painful."

Within days she was in hospital and having surgery. A decade before, Edward Rayner got himself a Herald headline and photograph in similar circumstances. On a June morning in 1997, the 61-year-old furniture store manager pulled on a jersey to keep the cold at bay just before leaving for work.

When he arrived, he noticed an itching sensation on his forearm. He took the jersey off and out dropped a spider - he says he knew it was a white-tail because he'd been bitten a year before, though with little effect. Soon enough this new itch was a red welt and was growing bigger day by day. "I felt a bit off ... I had flu-like symptoms - but it was winter." His wife had tried to "draw out the poison" and dress the wound, but that hadn't worked.

Nor had the antibiotic injections A&E dispensed. Within days one A&E doctor decided what he was seeing was not good. "The doctor said to me 'you can lose your arm if you don't get this seen to'. He was quite concerned."

Rayner was whipped into surgery and awoke to find a 5cm crater where the poisoned flesh had been. "I had this quite big gaping hole which was quite deep. I was horrified."

In the case of New Zealand v Lampona murina, the prosecution rests. Why wouldn't it? There is no denying these three individuals suffered, they were hospitalised and, in the cases of Iraia and Rayner, had flesh cut from their bodies. And there seems no shortage of people who will testify to disagreeable effects - some greater, some lesser - from a bite from what they believe was a white-tail.

The evidence, I'm sure the court will acknowledge, seems compelling, beyond reasonable doubt: the Australian white-tail spider is guilty. Indeed it has, over the years, been alleged to cause everything from headaches, to liver and gastrointestinal complaints and immune system disorders - and put patients at risk of amputation following the development of gangrene.

As recently as 1991 the New Zealand Medical Journal (NZMJ) considered the possibility the Lampona murina - lampo means "shine" - might cause "necrotising arachnidism", meaning its bite might literally cause flesh to rot. And these things are in our homes and gardens.

One of these eight-legged freaks, by reputation New Zealand's most sinister common spider, is likely to be somewhere near you, perhaps behind a curtain, maybe under the bed, as you read this. It is as well then, that the prosecution's case is so much like a spider's web - a delicate, attractive, apparently perfect tissue, but one spun from misinformation and wrongful assumptions.

For as potent as the allegations against the white-tail spider appear, experts in medicine, spiders and poisons say they have more forceful evidence: a body of research and knowledge which concludes that the white-tail spider is no more dangerous - which is to say not dangerous at all - than any other household spider. It is, they say, more myth than monster.

In New Zealand, the year 1886 is unlikely to be remembered for anything but Mt Tarawera. The mountain's extreme makeover killed as many as 120 and destroyed the famous pink and white terraces. Its fury is still the most deadly natural disaster in our modern history. But it was this same year that a rather more modest natural disaster, at least in the eyes of some, took place: the first white-tail spider was first recorded in New Zealand, at Waiwera northwest of Auckland, though it arrived here with early settlers.

Then, as now, the white-tail was something of a curiosity. They do not spin webs and they eat not insects but other spiders, notably the extremely common grey house spider. However, the most curious thing about it turns out to be what the hell it was doing prior to the 1990s. For at least 100 years after arriving in New Zealand it lay quietly in our countryside and in our homes, apparently neither bothering us nor biting us.

Then suddenly from the early 1990s one couldn't escape white-tail horror stories in the media. The battered Herald paper file on arachnids, which runs back to 1933, has not one mention of white-tails prior to then. If the files are a guide, our earliest spider obsession was the native katipo, which is definitely poisonous ("DON'T DISTURB THEM" screamed one headline). The panic had moved on to American black widows ("reputed to be the most deadly in the world") by 1970, then to red-backs and golden orbs from Australia in the 1980s.

According to a 2004 NZMJ report, the first verified bite from a white-tail didn't occur here until 1980. This went unreported by the Herald. It is not until September 1993, this paper reported "a national increase in the number of reported bites from the widespread but little-known arachnid".

A Nelson entomologist quoted in the story stressed the spider was not aggressive, though it caused symptoms ranging from "nausea to skin rash". There was, however, "nothing to be alarmed about" he said - a comment, it turns out, that was too little and too late.

One Saturday afternoon two years before that Herald report, Denis Welch, the then esteemed political columnist and satirist for the Listener, was leisurely reading a newspaper at his Wellington home. In an hour or so, he planned to head to Parliament for a press conference by then Prime Minister Jim Bolger, but for the moment he was lying on his home's seagrass floor matting, propped up on his elbows, reading. It was then, he believes, he was bitten by a white-tail spider - though he did not feel it. He was waiting on the ninth floor of the Beehive a short time later when he felt his elbow start to throb.

In pain, he left Parliament and went directly to an A&E, where he was given antihistamines. He spent four days in bed with an elbow the size of a golf ball, feeling "very, very ill". For the next two weeks, under his column's listing in the contents, the Listener reported "Denis Welch is on sick leave".

The second week, in a tongue-in-cheek brief, the magazine explained the reason for Welch's absence: the "lampooner" had been laid up in bed after being bitten by a Lampona. If there is a prosecution to be laid for the rise of the white-tail as a media-made bad guy, it is at the door of Welch - at least according to that 2004 NZMJ report. It alleged that "widespread public concern" about the spider began in 1991 after media reports of Welch's bite.

"Since then there has been a dramatic surge in inquiries made to institutions ..." Welch's response to the accusation is a laugh and an "I didn't do it, your honour". What's more, he maintains he was bitten by a white-tail - a corpse was found in the seagrass mat and identified by an expert - and that he wouldn't go near one again. "I've seen reports saying they're not harmful. All I can say, my own testimony is, that 'yes they are'. They're not going to kill you but they can make you quite sick. Once bitten, twice shy."

Or once smitten by rumour, twice shy. For whatever the beginnings of the white-tail's media-driven notoriety, it is hearsay, not fact, that has built its fearsome reputation. The myths and misinformation surrounding the Lampona are really rather astounding. And, with the help of two arachnologists and a poisons specialist, we shall address each of them.

Myth one, is that you may not feel a white-tail bite - even when asleep. This is patently wrong. "They have a powerful bite because they have to kill other spiders," says Te Papa arachnologist Phil Sirvid. "You can appreciate that it is a dangerous business, so they have a very powerful, mechanical bite, you will feel it. Any time you read a story where the person says they were bitten by a white-tail but didn't feel it, it probably wasn't [a white-tail]."

Myth two is that because it feeds on other spiders it can somehow transfer venom from another spider - say the daddy long-legs, which is widely alleged to carry venom poisonous to humans but has fangs too small to deliver it.

This, according to Sirvid, is rubbish. Spiders digest their prey with enzymes before eating. "They turn everything into soup first, so you appreciate that a lot of this stuff [venom included] is broken down. "[Also] there is zero evidence of [the daddy long-legs] being any danger to anyone whatsoever and of course the white-tail spider does not pick up the venom of the spider when he eats it. It's double wrong." Myth three is that white-tails infect wounds with bacteria they carry. Sirvid says there is no evidence from the Australian study that this happens - though you can never say never.

The Lampona's own venom is not dangerous to humans but any bite - just like any cut - can cause problems from secondary infection, says Dr Leo Schep from the National Poisons Centre at the Dunedin School of Medicine. "A friend of mine was shifting house ... [and] cut his hand. Unfortunately he was exposed to a certain bacteria which was resistant to most antibiotics. He ended up in hospital for a week for treatment for blood poisoning."

The lesson? Any cut or bite is going to open you up to bacteria, and a secondary infection can lead to serious complications. So if you are bitten, wound management is a must - make sure to clean and dress the bite and, if any infection develops, see your doctor as soon as possible. Myth four is that white-tail bites cause necrotising ulcers.

A 2003 report by the Medical Journal of Australia reviewed 130 patients with confirmed (the offending spider was caught and identified by an expert) white-tail bites. It concluded the bites caused minor effects in most cases or a persistent painful red lesion in almost half of cases - and that it was "very unlikely" a Lampona bite would cause necrotic ulcers. "If it is a white-tail spider [that bites you]" says Schep, "there is no need to concern yourself - except for [the possibility of] secondary infection."

Exasperation is the word. One that pretty much sums up the tone of those who do not confuse the white-tail's reality with its reputation. "As soon as I see a media thing on [the white-tail], I just cringe,"' says Landcare Research arachnologist Grace Hall. She believes that the fear of white-tails is now something like a superstitious reaction.

"There are just so many myths about them. Most the time it's what we call spiderless bites, the person didn't actually see the spider bite, they didn't feel it bite them, it's always like they found a spider afterwards. "But people get a wound on them and they want something to blame and people are quite happy to blame spiders - because most people don't like spiders." Hall adds - and Sirvid also brings this up - that doctors are often quick to identify something as a spider bite because the diagnosis is useful for making a claim to the ACC.

Certainly ACC's own figures show a huge jump in claims involving spider bites in the last five years. In the year to June 2004, there were 2421 new spider-related claims. In the year to June 2008 there 4321. "[Doctors] also don't want to say to a patient 'I don't know'. They want to give people something," Hall says. This is where myth meets convenience. But might there be something else at play here? Might it be that in country so lacking in natural threats there is some sort of psychological need for something to blame if a bite goes bad?

Both Hall and Sirvid believe this to be the case. "I think you're on to something there," Sirvid says. "We do have very little that is dangerous - and for that we should consider ourselves extremely fortunate. "I love spiders but I realise most people don't. If there's a chance to demonise these things people sometimes take it with both hands. But really with a white-tail there's nothing much to fear beyond a painful bite and if you look after the bite wound, and you're not one of the extremely unfortunate few who some how have a freakish intolerance of the venom, you shouldn't expect too many problems."

However, Sirvid is quick to point out he's not diminishing those who have problems after bites, most likely from secondary infection. "We don't want to pooh-pooh their trauma - far from it. But what we worry about is that if you blame the wrong thing, is that helping anybody? Now it is difficult to know what's happening here, it could be a whole host of things [that cause these reactions] but we don't know for sure - we're just pretty sure it's not the white- tail, except in maybe very rare circumstances."

In reality, the white-tail spider bites, and its bite can, like any bite, lead to infection. Beyond that, it's dangerous only in the mind. The choice, then, is yours. "Some people, well you're never going to get them away from [the certainty that white-tails are dangerous]," says Hall. "They are just always going to believe it."

A bug's life

There are 61 species of the white-tails in its native Australia, but just two in New Zealand - Lampona murina and the Lampona cylindrata (first recorded in Nelson in 1913). It's believed they came here with some of our oldest European settlers. So it's likely the first white-tail recorded here was the long distant offspring of a Lampona which had arrived decades earlier. Much as in Australia, Lampona murina and Lampona cylindrata tend to live apart.

The first's distribution is more northerly, the other more southerly, though both are now urban spiders. Both species are slender-looking creatures, nocturnal feeders, have poor eyesight, grow to between 12-17mm long, are typically greyish with banded legs and have a white mark on their bum (near the spinners), giving them their common name. Females live for around two years, though the males, as is typical with spiders, only live long enough to mate.