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I think it's pretty safe to say that we all have h
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by Jahon on May 9, 2009
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I think it's pretty safe to say that we all have heard of the saying that the venom of the black widow is "15 times more potent than the venom of a rattlesnake." I find this rather hard to believe and according to Wikipedia the LD50 for the Black Widow is listed as 0.002 mg/kg. If this is true, it would make it WAY more potent than just 15 times, and from what I went through after getting bitten by that little sucker, I got to say I believe it. Does anybody know much about just how toxic the black widow's venom is to verify any of this? Honestly, I'm still in quite a bit of shock about what that thing did to me.
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by Cro on May 9, 2009
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Jahon, what you have learned, is that the Black Widow Spider can be a very bad bite.
It can be extremly painfull.
It can take a long time to recover from.
It is good to know that you have now recovered from the bite, and are doing well.
Best Regards
John Z
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by Chance on May 10, 2009
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By and large, spiders (and many other inverts) put most snakes to shame. Think about the widespread necrosis a recluse bite can yield, and imagine just how little venom is actually injected. On the order of a typical venomous snake envenomation, I wouldn't even want to imagine the results! And we haven't even mentioned the marine critters!
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by Cro on May 10, 2009
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Saying that Black Widow venom is 15 times more potent than the venom of a rattlesnake really means very little unless you know which rattlesnake they are comparing it to.
Best Regards
John Zegel
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by Jahon on May 10, 2009
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I don't think it really matters what rattlesnake your comparing it to. If that LD50 chart is correct, the venom of the black widow is way more toxic than just 15 times compared to even the most toxic rattlesnake.
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RE: I think it's pretty safe to say that we all ha
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by Cro on May 10, 2009
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Jahon, it could be that the 15 times is just a number someone came up with, without any research.
Sometimes things like that get repeated enough to become accepted "facts."
Since you have the LD50 info for the spidey, and for the most toxic rattlesnake, why dont you do a bit of math, and find out what the real number should be, if it is not 15 times ?
Best Regards
John Z
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by Jahon on May 10, 2009
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If the LD50 for the black widow venom is correct, it would make it 105 times more toxic than the tiger rattlesnake and 12 and a half times more toxic than the Inland taipan.
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by puffadder7 on May 10, 2009
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i can assure you that ld50 is not right, here is some ld50 info, members.tripod.com/~c_kianwee/rpotent.htm, then i also found this but it ould not let me open the website, 'Black Widow spider, Latrodectus mactans, yielded an LD50 o f 1.39 mg/kg while the venom o f the Latrodectus tredecimguttatus, yielded an LD50 o f 0.59 mg/kg ...', but most of theses ld50's you find are bogus, arin
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by LarryDFishel on May 10, 2009
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Assuming that you're looking here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_bite
First of all, notice that there are 2 different LD50's listed and they differ by almost 3 orders of magnitude. The second looks closer to what I see listed most other places.
The reference given for the .002mg/kg number is a dead link, and the only other place I saw that number in a quick search was on a page that was clearly copied from wikipedia.
I think chances are fairly hight that someone misread their source, which probably said 0.002 mg/g (2.0 mg/kg). But I don't have access to the original source.
I guess another possibility is that one number is the usual Mouse LD50 and the other is an estimated Human LD50?
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