An eight-year-old boy provoked a black widow spider into biting him in the hopes of developing superpowers like his hero Spider-Man. Ouch.
The little lad, from Vichuloma, Oruro Department in Bolivia, found the potentially lethal arachnid - which has venom around 15 times stronger than a rattlesnake - under a rock while playing near a river.
Having seen how Peter Parker got his powers, the youngster picked the spider up, placed it on his hand and provoked it until it bit him.
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Ernesto Vásquez, head of the Zoonotic Diseases Programme for the Departmental Health Service of Oruro, said: “The child, without calculating the risks, picked it up and, according to him, put it on the back of his hand where the arachnid made the respective bite.”
I hope at this point, I don’t need to remind you to not try this at home. You won’t end up a masked web-slinger with Spidey-Sense and you could end up dead.
After the spider had bitten him, the boy popped the spider into a jar and went home.
Once back at home, he began to experience aches and severe muscle contractures but refused to tell his parents about the incident with the black widow.
However, his condition began to deteriorate and his mum demanded to know what he’d been up to - prompting him to ‘fess up.
The little boy was rushed to hospital where an antidote was quickly administered to counteract the poison and stabilise his condition.
The health department explained: “The serum is a specific antidote against the venom, which neutralises the toxicity of the poison in the person’s body so it does not have any effect.”
Once he was feeling better, the lad was asked to explain how he come to sustain the bite, and admitted he ‘wanted to become Spider-Man’.
His mum went on to say that her son is a ‘huge fan of Spider-Man and loves to watch the movies’. Let’s hope his recent experiences haven’t put him off.
Vásquez said: “We are extremely concerned because it came to our attention from the analysis and responses from the child after he had recovered that he used the arachnid for one simple purpose.
“He wanted to become Spider-Man.”
Weirdly, this isn’t the first time this has happened in Bolivia. Back in 2020, three brothers, aged between eight and 12, found a black widow while out collecting wood and antagonised the creature until it bit.
Much like the lad in the story above, they later began to feel unwell and revealed what they’d done to their concerned parents who took them to hospital for treatment.
Fortunately, they were seen in time and released after a five-day stay.
Topics: Health, Spider-Man, World News, Spiders
Claire Reid