Allergic reactions to T bites

Does anybody have any knowledge or experiences with how severe allergic reactions to tarantula bites can be. I have never been bitten, nor stung by bees or wasps.
I have only been in the hobby for a few years but getting bit at some point is pretty much inevitable in the long run!

Anybody think it's a good idea to get tested at the doctors for possible allergens, I'd hate to be tending me T's alone and end up looking like this:

My understanding is that the way their venom works doesn't really translate into allergic reactions, like say a bee sting would cause.

You can NOT get an allergic reaction from a T bite. The reason behind this is that their venom is composed of peptides rather than proteins and our body cannot react to the peptides due to them being so small.

Bites aren't inevitable IMO. Guess we can all report back here when we're on our deathbeds lol.

Oreo said:

Bites aren't inevitable IMO. Guess we can all report back here when we're on our deathbeds lol.

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+1 100% agreed. Just look at poec54 as an example, the guy's been in the hobby basically since its inception, has kept mainly OW for a while now, has more than I could count and has yet to be bitten by any.

I have personally been at it on a small scale for 14 years and I can say I haven't even had a close call.

Thanks for the science of it Angel, I couldn't recall the reasons off the top of my head.

Ok people thanks for the feedback, glad that's cleared up! I wonder where I might read up on the chemical composition of venom, would be an interesting read!

Let me rephrase, bites aren't inevitable but afters years of keeping, or even decades, I think the likely hood of getting bit is very high. No matter how careful you are things always happen that you cannot prepare for I suppose. Personally the concept of getting bit doesn't phase me at all, IMO the negatives of getting bit are far outweighed by the positives of keeping these awesome animals!

---------- Post added 11-08-2014 at 08:19 PM ----------

Any tips to share in regards to avoiding bites for so long? I always thought I was safe behind a set of 30cm tongs. But according to some bite reports I've read certain tarantulas are quite atapt at running up these with ease!

sublimejimbob said:

Let me rephrase, bites aren't inevitable but afters years of keeping, or even decades, I think the likely hood of getting bit is very high. No matter how careful you are things always happen that you cannot prepare for I suppose.

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No, the likelihood of getting bit isn't particularly high, even when you have a lot of fast, feisty spiders, as long as you don't handle them. I got my first T over 40 years ago, and my current collection is 60% OW. But then I don't handle mine, or disturb them more than necessary. Stan Schultz, author of TKG, had a large collection specializing in docile species like Brachypelma and Aphonopelma (Stan and I have opposite theories on what qualifies as desirable traits in spiders). In the nearly 40 years he kept tarantulas, he was bit about 2 dozen times, due in no small part to him being a big proponent of handling. Let me assure you, many of the spiders I have and have had, are infinitely faster and more defensive than most of the 8 legged potatoes Stan kept. However, I do have the additional motivation of most of mine having fairly painful bites.

So, keep your hands away from where they don't belong, and you can be in this hobby for decades and be bite-free. One of the keys is staying calm, moving slow and deliberate. You don't want to have panicky, jerky movements, as those will get spiders wound up. Once they do get wound up, put the lid on and come back later. Being mostly nocturnal, they're at low tide on cool mornings; use that to your advantage. Always have a catch cup in arm's reach, everywhere in the room. And most importantly, choose your species in stages, start with ones suited for beginners (and some of those are beautiful). DO NOT pick them solely by pretty colors and markings. Over the course of a few years, work your way up to intermediate, and then advanced species. Don't be in a rush to jump in the deep end. Take your time and enjoy yourself. Even guys like me have some 'beginner' species.

Thanks for the advice poec, will definitely bear it all in mind. I currently have 7 species, 5 of which are new world and all very easy to deal with. I do confess to having 2 old world (OBT & P. regalis), which I bought during my early period of naivety. Lucky for me the are both relatively easy specimens up to now, my OBT has never even thrown me a defence posture, it prefers to sprint short distances and stridulate every so often. Next purchases I'm planning are G. pulchra, A. anax & an L.P!

Poec54 said:

the 8 legged potatoes Stan kept

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Hahaha that's great!

What constitutes a "close call"? I've had slings crawl out of their cup and onto my hand more times than I'd like to admit while doing maintenance, luckily I only keep NWs.

Cavedweller said:

What constitutes a "close call"? I've had slings crawl out of their cup and onto my hand more times than I'd like to admit while doing maintenance, luckily I only keep NWs.

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When you have arboreals, on occasion you will have them running out of their cages and onto you, especially slings and juveniles. It usually happens to me during cage transfers. I've had Poec juveniles run out, up my arm, on my back, inside my shirt, and even up inside my pant leg (and had to carefully disrobe). Those would qualify as 'close calls.' Pays to be calm. The upside is I never had this happen with adults. If I can go thru this with OW arboreals and not get bit, there's rarely a good excuse for people to get bit by NW terrestrials. Handling, carelessness, complacency, and sloppy habits are involved in the vast majority of bites.

---------- Post added 11-08-2014 at 08:41 PM ----------

sublimejimbob said:

my OBT has never even thrown me a defence posture, it prefers to sprint short distances and stridulate every so often.

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It's fine if an OBT dashes back in it's retreat. If it stops and stridulates, you're being warned. Take that seriously. What happens next with them can be unpredictable and it's a bite you won't soon forget. Even a 2" one will pack a punch.

I last think I saw Venom dripping from my MM Obt lol. They dont play around...I use catch cup & paintbrush.

Don't worry I always take it very seriously. I use a catch cup and paint brush for all interactions, aside from my MF A. avic & GBB sling. For my OBT I simply throw a cricket into his retreat once a week and refill his water dish. It surprises me how much if a laid-back eater he is, just waits until his prey is extremely close and slowly pulls it in, like my G. rosea used to.

Angel Minkov said:

You can NOT get an allergic reaction from a T bite. The reason behind this is that their venom is composed of peptides rather than proteins and our body cannot react to the peptides due to them being so small.

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This is a gross oversimplification.

First of all tarantula venom does contain proteins (so do their urticating hairs btw) as well as peptides, amino acids and biogenic amines, neurotransmitters, enzymes, polyamines, free acids (like citrate, lactic acid, ATP), inorganic ions and salts, glucose, nucleic acids,... . And they vary a lot from species to species.

Second of all certain peptides can trigger allergic reactions.

Yet there are no recorded instances of major allergic reactions (like anaphylactic shock) to T venom. I've actually seen clinical reports suggesting mild allergic reactions to T venom (I seem to remember it being a pokie, but I could be mistaken) but can't seem to find the article atm.

If there was a (significant) chance to experience a strong allergic reaction this would more than likely have been recorded by now.

A couple sources:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ez2325SKeenFkUe88lf6mPHHfiGtrxJj03fecEjO3F0/edit?hl=en_US
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/55/2/235.full
http://www.uwm.edu.pl/biochemia/index.php/pl/biopep/34-immunology-of-proteins-and-peptides

Thanks for that man, will give your sources a read when I have a day off! I didn't even realise tarantula venom had been studied to this extent, wish I had known about it earlier as would have made a great subject for my organic chemistry project!

You cannot be alergic to there venom, but hairs in New worlds You can. As me an many hobbyists who been around longer than 5 years would agree. N T owners usually aren't alergic to hairs but sometimes they are.

I didn't mean that their venom consisted only of peptides, but rather that most of their venom is. Loved your answer tho and I would definitely check out the links.

Poec54 said:

... In the nearly 40 years he kept tarantulas, he was bit about 2 dozen times, due in no small part to him being a big proponent of handling. ...

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[Highlighting is mine.)

I do not entirely agree with this assessment. I agree that if you never handle your tarantula you'll likely never get bitten just as you'll never die in an auto accident if you never ride in a car. But just as there are individuals who die in auto accidents who've never been in a car, so too are there people who may be bitten even though they never handle a tarantula. The bottom lines are:

1) Your probability is much lower if you never partake, but it still exists to some extant.

2) There may be "redeeming social values" to handling a tarantula and taking the arguably negligible risk of being bitten just as there may be "redeeming social values" to riding in a car in spite of the probabilities of getting killed.

There are, however, several reasons why both Marguerite and I were bitten by dozens of tarantulas each that had nothing to do with whether we were proponents or not of handing tarantulas. During the period when we were doing this (late 1960s through early 1980s) every tarantula bite was strongly suspected of being fatal or at least intensely painful by the layperson. And, no one else save Dr. W. J. Baerg seems to have had any experience or been performing any tests to confirm or disprove that "street wisdom."

So, we handled literally every species we could wrap our hands around. As Rick has mentioned on numerous occasions, during that era most imported tarantulas were either New World with relatively mild venom or little or no inclination to bite. (One can only wonder at what the outcome would have been if the only species available would have been African!) And there were literally hundreds of species and thousands of individuals! And we both did this for over 40 years! We did the experiment so we could tell you what we'd found (i.e., almost all tarantulas have a largely harmless bite or wouldn't bite at all. And, those that would bite usually either employed a dry bite or had a weak venom) so you wouldn't have to perform such a "life threatening" experiment on your own person.

Not because we wanted you to handle them, but rather because we wanted to say with some authority which ones were handleable and which weren't BEFORE we told you that you could handle them!

Should you handle your own tarantula? There are all sorts of ifs, ands, and buts in the answer to that one. Lots of reasons you might, and lots of reasons you shouldn't that I won't go into here. If you really want to know, you need to perform a search on these forums using handle and/or handling in the search terms, and read a good book on tarantulas.

This topic is an old one, flogged nearly to death by the repetition. It seems that its discussion is at least as deadly as the tarantula's venom!

Stan I am glad you did not try this with old world Ts, you got bitten to prove it wasn't fatal and a vast majority of Ts didn't bite you? You are a hero in my book. I would rather not get bitten by any of my Bigger T.

I once or twice had Ts who almost bit me but stopped , when they realized I wasn't food. Since then I keep my hands far away from Ts:biggrin:. One was a big female P striata, so I was playing with fire,... Risk for extreem pain.

Big female P striata I thought looked dead /not moving but it was sleeping !!! during daytime. ha ha :laugh:.