Freaky Friends Bugs

My first encounter with a green lynx spider was last November while visiting my in-laws in the DFW area in Texas. I spent a couple hours walking around Bob Jones Nature Center (which by the way, I definitely recommend visiting if you are ever in the area) looking for bugs to photograph, but I hadn't had much luck. On my way out, I stopped at a bush by the visitor center in a last attempt to find something interesting. I caught a flash of movement which turned out to be a beautiful katydid. After capturing a few shots of the katydid, I realized that my hand was mere inches from a rather large momma spider guarding her egg sac. I personally find spiders much more interesting than katydids so I left the katydid to photograph the spider. Momma spider didn't seem to mind me taking some pictures, but I couldn't resist using a piece of grass to disturb her to get her in a defensive posture. I later learned that green lynx spiders can squirt venom from their fangs towards any wou...

Have you seen the recent news story about the girl who was bit by a black widow in Massachusetts? If you haven't, you can check it out here or here or here . However, after reading the article, the entire mishap sounds to be a misdiagnosis. I'm not a medical doctor nor a medical entomologist, but black widow bites result in some pretty distinct symptoms. Let me go through the article to explain why I think a black widow was not involved. The first part of the story I have a problem with is the initial diagnosis of a spider bite. As has been previously shown , most diagnosed spider bites are not actually spider bites. There are no tests nor definitive signs to confirm a spider bite (with the exception of latrodectism -envenomation by a black widow-which is possible to diagnose based on the symptoms). My second problem lies with how the injury was determined to have been caused by a black widow in particular. According to the first article I linked to, the do...