Going bananas over spiders

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In a recent article, we learn of a woman afraid that thousands of spiders have infested her home by hatching from an eggsac stuck to a banana. What's more, it's assumed these are the most deadly spiders in the world: Brazilian wandering spiders! She had her entire home fumigated, treated with a "UV fogging agent", and insect monitoring stations installed.

I ran out of eyebrows to raise while reading this story. Here's some things to consider:

  1. The Brazilian wandering spider (Phoneutria spp.) rarely makes it into banana shipments. Data from the U.S. show that, from 1926-2014, only 6 of these spiders have been found in international cargo. It is unlikely, to say the least, that someone will discover another one.
  2.  The majority (94%) of bananas consumed (in the U.S., at least) are from Ecuador, as well as Colombia and Central America. Brazil produces bananas, but consumes most of them domestically.
  3. While the venom from a Brazilian wandering spider is indeed medically relevant, the venom from the pantropical huntsman spider (Heteropoda venatoria) is not. The pantropical huntsman spider is the most common large, startling spider to be shipped with produce, along with members of the comparably harmless genus Cupiennius.
  4. Spider identification is a notoriously tricky business, and even world experts can spend hours laboring over taxonomic keys before arriving with confidence at an ID. Large, unique spiders are certainly easier to identify, but not from their eggsacs! The pictures accompanying these kinds of stories always show a small, nondescript eggsac. You cannot count on pest control specialists to identify a spider by its eggsac, especially when expert arachnologists could only laugh if you asked them to do so.
  5. It may be a small comfort, but Phoneutria spp. eggsacs contain hundreds, not thousands of eggs.
  6. Even if the eggsac did belong to a Brazilian wandering spider and the spiderlings survived long enough to hatch, they would not be a threat to anyone. I'll save my position on spider bites for later, but just trust me for now.
  7. People can spend their money however they see fit, but the measures taken here seem rather extreme. The "nuke it from orbit" approach to pest control is certainly more costly and hazardous to the homeowner's health than a more reasonable "catch/squash every one you see" tactic. I'd keep them as pets, but hey, that's me.