Video: Venomous Brown Recluse Spider Finds New Home in Unexpected State
OutdoorHub Reporters 05.01.17
The venomous spider, known as brown recluse spiders, have found a new home in a place they haven’t often been found before.
Sorry Michigan, but it sounds like brown recluse spiders have found the Mitten State much more comfortable than experts originally thought.
According to the Detroit Free Press, a homeowner in Davison, Michigan, found a pair of spiders in his garage last month. The spiders turned out to be the sixth confirmed discovery of brown recluse in Michigan since 2011, said Michigan State University entomologist Howard Russell.
A bite from a brown recluse can have dramatically different effects on humans, ranging from mild irritation to flesh-eating necrosis, and even death.
MSU’s Howard Russell is especially intrigued by this discovery, simply because this species of spider isn’t supposed to hang around through Michigan’s cold winters. Originally, brown recluse were thought to be native in only Nebraska, southern Ohio, Texas, and states surrounding the Gulf of Mexico.
In this case, “it appears brown recluse spiders survived the winter of 2016-17 in an unheated garage,” Russell said. “Does this indicate transported populations, or is this evidence of range expansion? That’s the question, and I don’t know.”
