Meet The Man Who Found The World's Most Venomous Spider In A Bag Of Bananas That He Bought At A Local Supermarket

Finding a spider in your room is nothing compared to this.

Elzaan Van der merwe

• Published in News
• January 23, 2018

Spiders and other insects are the reason that we keep the doors and windows closed at all times because nobody wants to wake up with a huge spider sitting on their face. That is my worst nightmare and I'm sure it is some of yours as well.

Yet there are people out there with pet Tarantula's that love the way the spider feels when it crawls all over their bodies. I truly don't know how they do it and how they can love this hairy creepy crawlies, but I guess every person has their stuff that they are crazy about. 

This man, however, didn't sign up for any spider babysitting duties when he got the surprise of his life when he looked at his bunch of bananas.

This is 53-year-old Neil Langley an office worker in the UK. He bought a bunch of bananas from Asda a local supermarket store and he got the surprise of a lifetime when he looked at the bananas when he sat at his desk and saw something off about it.

He saw a spider lurking between the bananas that he packaged himself the day before and he is so lucky that this spider didn't bite him. It turns out that this spider was one of the most venomous spiders in the world. The wandering spider from Brazil and they are known to be from Central America.

"I bought a bunch of four or five bananas at the ASDA and put them in a bag but I didn’t notice the spider until I was at my desk the next day," Neil said.

"It was in one of the clear bags you use for fruit and it must have just woken up, I was lucky it hadn’t crawled out at home or in my work bag."

The spider caught Neil's attention from the corner of his eye and when he looked closer at the spider he thought it looked different than the spiders they normally get in the UK as it was bigger with a range of colors. He managed with the help of his curious and afraid co-workers to get the spider into a plastic bag. They started brainstorming right away on what they must do with it.

"I didn’t really think that it was threatening, but some of my colleagues started to get a bit concerned about it."

"We weren’t sure what to do with it. We’re on the sixth floor, so it’s hard to know how to get rid of that sort of thing. At one stage we discussed flushing it down the toilet, but that seemed a bit unfair to the poor thing," Neil said.

They eventually called the RSPCA to try to identify what type of spider it was. The RSPCA confirmed it was indeed a Brazilian wandering spider, known for its deadly neurotoxins that can kill a human. It is also known as the armed spider. 

One bite from this spider will have you struggling to breathe, losing control of all your muscles in your body, extreme pain and it will give a man a bonus of having an erection for a few hours, but it will be uncomfortable so don't get thoughts!

What did they end up doing with the spider?

"Eventually a colleague who is an animal lover put it in a cereal box and gave it to the RSPCA, who took it away," Neil said. "It must have made a difference to the cats and dogs they usually get called out to."

The world's most venomous spider now has a new home called the  Bristol Zoo.

Elzaan Van der merwe