“They believe the spider was making its way out – eating its way out of my toe,” a British man claimed after a European cruise.
A man celebrating his 35th wedding anniversary with a European cruise ended up needing medical attention, and says he was told it was all due to a spider laying eggs in his toe.
Colin Blake, per BBC, said he had to visit the ship’s onboard physician after he experienced swelling and discomfort in his foot.
Blake claimed to British media that he was informed by the doctor that the swelling had been caused by a bite from a Peruvian wolf spider.
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He said his toe began to look discolored and infected after a meal outside in Marseille with his wife of over three decades.
“My wife thought it may be because I had new sandals and they were rubbing on my big toe and that was causing it to be red,” Blake explained.
Once home, the man got a prescription for antibiotics. He also said medical professionals told him they found spider eggs in the milk-like pus that emerged from the appendage when they lanced the inflamed toe.
The swelling eventually went down but bite marks were still visible for weeks afterward.
However, Blake claimed that four weeks after he seemed to have fully recovered, he started to feel discomfort again. He went back to the doctor where he said they removed a spider from his toe, which they believe had been killed by the antibiotics
“One of the spider eggs hadn’t been flushed and must have hatched,” he told the news outlet. “They believe the spider was making its way out – eating its way out of my toe.”
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However, soon after British media picked up the story, some arachnology experts cast doubt on one aspect of the tale — specifically the most terrifying part.
BBC spoke with a Sara Goodacre from the University of Nottingham, who told them: “I can’t possibly see how it could be true at all because I know about their biology. [The egg sacs] take quite a while to spin. The spider venom is not necrotising, it is designed to paralyse a fruit fly.”
“There is no European wolf spider that could really penetrate the skin,” Goodacre said. While the British Arachnological Society told the outlet that they found the whole story “implausible”.
Meanwhile, Dr. Goodacre told Business Insider she did not doubt that the man had suffered an injury, she was only questioning a spider being named as a suspect: “The world around us is full of things that could make a little puncture mark. And the key thing is that totally fits the story. What absolutely doesn’t fit, is the spider story.”
Nonetheless, something happened to Mr. Blake’s toe — and if you have the stomach for it you can see a photo of his wound for yourself here.
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