Beware of Nurse Thornfinger: poisonous spider conquers Germany

“Beware of the poisonous spider” and “Dangerous poisonous spider in Germany” – these are the headlines of many newspaper and internet articles about the nurse’s thorn finger.

It's understandable that some people panic. What's wrong with such headlines? How poisonous is the nurse's thorn finger really and what should you do if you are bitten?

Spider researcher Peter Jäger can only shake his head at such news.

“The fear is unreal,” he says. The biologist from the Senckenberg Research Institute even voluntarily allowed himself to be bitten by a nurse's thorn finger - to show that you don't drop dead afterwards.

This makes him one of the few people who have actually been bitten by the spider, which originally comes from the Mediterranean region. Because even if there is great fear of the small animal: so far only a few people in Germany have seen it and even fewer have actually felt its poison.

The nurse thorn finger spider, or simply thorn finger, is actually native to the Mediterranean region. But now experts are announcing that it is spreading more and more in German-speaking countries!

Is it really poisonous?

Yes, it has poison glands and its claws are capable of penetrating human skin. The bite is painful and can cause some complications, which is why it was quickly given the name “death spider” on social networks. The bite of the thorn finger spider releases a relatively strong neurotoxin; it is the most poisonous spider in Europe. It kills small insects with its poison, but be careful: this poison is dangerous for humans, but not fatal.

Those affected report that the bite is comparable to a bee or wasp sting and, similar to insect stings, different reactions can occur. For some, there is not even a small amount of swelling, while for others it also causes a severe allergic reaction. Different reactions can occur when bitten by the nurse finger spider.

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The following symptoms are possible:

• Severe, burning pain that spreads
• Swelling that also spreads
• Pain in nearby lymph nodes; if the thorn finger spider has bitten a finger, the lymph nodes in the armpits hurt
• Severe reactions such as noticeable skin discoloration that extends far beyond the bite site, dizziness, vomiting, fever and circulatory failure are very rare and should of course be checked by a doctor.

(Source: Lifeline )

Nurse Thornfinger “Death Spider”?

This assumes that the spider, driven by unbridled aggression, attacks everything that comes near it.

But that's not the case, as with almost all other spiders, the thorn-fingered spider is simply too big for humans, not even close to being in the range of possible prey . However, if you approach her nest, mother thorn-finger spider becomes an animal and defends the clutch with all means possible, which also makes the name nurse understandable.

But is the global warming-related spread true?

One thing in advance, even if it may still sound different from some political directions, yes there is climate change and global warming is not a fantasy either, even if a rainy summer makes us believe otherwise, maybe the rain is warmer?

However, this climate change is not the cause of the animal's spread, nor has its "northern limit" moved further north, as one might assume. It's not as if you were using a ruler to draw a line from east to west, or vice versa, through Berlin; to the south there is the spider, to the north there is no spider. But it is not that simple, which is partly due to the fact that there was no targeted search and recording; there was evidence on the Swedish Baltic Sea island of Öland in the 1940s and in 2004. Individual finds in Denmark, Schleswig - Holstein and on Usedom, the occurrence on Usedom was confirmed in the summer of 2010. Individual finds were also available from Brandenburg.

Whether and to what extent this spider has spread in Central Europe in the last few decades is only partially clear, as intensive treatment of spiders only began in many regions of Europe in the 1990s. Numerous finds up to 1998 made it possible to document a fairly closed distribution area from northwestern Lower Lusatia in the central south of Brandenburg via the Fläming to the west of Saxony-Anhalt and north to Rathenow and Potsdam. Berlin was demonstrably not inhabited until 1991; in 2002 the spider was still considered very rare there.

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But if it was still quite rare in 2002, but at least it was already there, it cannot be said to be a sudden colonization. It cannot be conclusively confirmed or denied whether the increasing area of ​​fallow land since 1990 or climate change is responsible for the increase in settlement, perhaps a combination of both.

( Source : Ammen-Dornfinger)

Finally, it remains to say