Originally posted by: KarmaPolice
Are black widows really dangerous? I hate spiders and I would kill it and then hire someone to search my house if it was a deadly spider.
I wouldn't really call it deadly, but it is potentially dangerous. Honestly your odds of dying from the bite in America are almost nil unless you're very old or very young, but you'll have to go to the ER, get antivenin, endure excruciating pain, risk an allergic reaction, pay huge medical bills, explain to your boss that you missed a week of work because you foolishly played with a poisonous spider, apologize to your family for making them worry, etc, etc.
Black widows are very nonagressive to us and only bite when threatened. If you know what you're doing you can pick them up and let them crawl on you. Of course, that's true to varying extents with nearly any spider. They only defend themselves when they feel they have to, and they have no interest in biting humans, though some are more easily provoked than others. Again I say
if you know what you're doing. If there's anything in this post you didn't already know, you don't know enough to handle spiders. I sure as hell don't handle them.