Aaaaaaaghecho!
Dad collapses after bite by UK's most venomous spider, the fake widow
Why don't the Echo bother to even get the basic facts before writing an article? The only actual facts in this one are that a bloke was bitten by a spider, several times, and then later fainted in Toys R' Us.
The article states that "Mr Galton said hospital staff identified the trapped spider, whose body was bigger than a 5p coin, as a fake widow" Or, to put it another way, a man who isn't a vet said that some people who also aren't vets said the spider was a fake widow. Its body was bigger than a 5p. Hate to be a nit-picker, but lots of spiders are bigger than a 5p, 5ps aren't really all that big. Also, there's no such thing as a fake widow. There is a phrase "false widow", but it's not actually an arachnid species, it's a phrase used to describe one of a variety of species commonly mistaken for a black widow. The article admits later on that the spider itself has yet to be formally identified, so in conclusion, nobody yet knows what type of spider it was, or indeed if it was even the spider's venom that caused the man to faint. Which makes the headline "UK's most venomous spider" a bit of a stab in the dark really.
The second piece of fiction: "It delivers enough poison to cause severe pain and inflammation.". Well as we've already established that any so-called facts about the spider in the article are now null and void because nobody even knows what type of spider it was, I should really have stopped criticising by now. But once again I must be pedantic, because spiders aren't poisonous, they're venomous. Poison is generally inhaled or ingested leading to unpleasant chemical reactions, but venom is injected directly into the blood, causing pain in smaller doses and impairment of essential bodily functions in higher doses. Although the symptoms described are typical of a good dose of spider venom, this guy was apparently bitten 10 times by this spider before he fainted, so in fairness, it probably wasn't a very venomous spider if it took that many bites just to cause him to lose conciousness.
By the way - I'm not claiming to be a spider expert. There are many things I don't know about spiders. But I can confidently say that everything in this blog post is the product of either my own knowledge or a small amount of research into the subject. Unlike Mr. Echo reporter who has clearly written an article off the top of his head, without so much as a google search. Annoyingly, he's being paid and I'm not. But the real reason I'm going on about this is that it pisses me off when spiders get a bad reputation, especially when almost all of them (especially in the UK) are completely harmless. All spiders are venomous, but most spiders only bite as an absolute last resort, and when they do, they rarely bite hard enough to puncture human skin. Yes, it's possible that this spider is a special case - maybe it's an exotic spider that escaped from somewhere - but don't believe everything you read about spiders, especially badly researched and factually inaccurate pieces of garbage like this article.