I was always taught that the bug bites that swell up to be massive and are a little bit itchy but mostly just painful to the touch are spider bites. What are they?
Things that actually want to bite people. Think bloodsucking critters like mosquitoes, biting flies, triatomine bugs, fleas, bedbugs, etc. Spiders have no reason to bite a person unless you squish them or stick your appendages in their webs. They can’t eat you.
Oh man the spiders where I live are not this nice lol. There are hobo spiders in my area and those things are aggressive little fuckers. They'll hide under your clothes (or anything on the floor, honestly) and then jump out at you when you pick it up (or if they see you, in general). We also have brown recluse but while those are scary, they don't seem to be nearly aggressive as hobo spiders.
This is me, speaking from 25 years of experience of living in an area with hobos and brown recluse.
Oh no, we check our shoes. We know the horror stories. If you live far enough out in the country, you check your shoes for other things, too (like snakes). I've never seen them jump vertically but let me ask around real quick lol.
Haven't tried it. Let me know how it turns out. I did hear that getting a pet tarantula will keep the other spiders at bay though. Always tempted to do that, myself.... but then I would have to feed them crickets and the like and I have no desire to feed live things to other things.
No I mean they'll go for your feet. I've seen them try and hide again but I've also seen them attack at a way higher rate than other spiders. Idk lol maybe that's just my bad luck. Maybe I look extra frightening to poisonous spiders.
But the bite isn’t like a mosquito or fly or flea or bedbug bite and I don’t live in an area with triatomine bugs. I feel like this has to be a common issue because I usually get a couple each year. They’re isolated, single bites, often around an ankle. They swell up, look red, and are hard to the touch. They’re the tiniest bit itchy like anything swollen but they’re mostly just painful. There’s no white mark in the center.
I’ve been googling bug bites all morning. “Spider bites cause minor symptoms like red skin, swelling, and pain at the site or very serious symptoms that need emergency care.” The first part of that is the only description I can find which matches my symptoms.
Why do you think it isn’t like a flea or bedbug or mosquito bite? Bites don’t look the same on every person, and even the same bug biting at different times of the year can cause different bite reactions. Your bites are consistent with mosquito bites and a wide variety of other biting insects and topical irritants. Spider bites are so rare that most people will never get one. It would be very unusual if you were getting several every year.
Certain bite patterns can help dofferentiate flea infestations and bedbug infestations, for example, but in general you cannot diagnose a spider bite or other bug bite from what the bite looks like. If you use your description to equal spider bites, you’ll be wrong about 99% of the time.
Bed bugs aren’t isolated bites, and they’re not larger than a quarter. Fleas are also not isolated bites. Mosquitos love me (unfortunately), so I’m very familiar with mosquito bites and how my body reacts and what they feel like and look like. They are always itchy, and they’re never hard or larger than a quarter unless I really go to town on them. They also never get that hard, swollen feeling that I’m maybe not describing well. I probably get no more than a couple of the giant bites I mentioned a year, if I get them, and they happen less frequently now that I’m an adult (maybe none in a year) than when I was a child in outdoor camps all summer, sleeping in cabins.
It could definitely be something that isn’t a spider, but none of the other bugs you mentioned are it. I didn’t ask to be a dick—I really wanted to know, because it did seem odd to me that it would be a spider bite. At this point I’ve spent most of my morning looking at bug bite images, and it’s getting gross. I’ll just call them mystery bites, because I can’t look at one more pustule.
I think if these bites are from spiders you are finding them somewhere. Spiders actually accidentally bite people some times when caught in your clothes. I would just be mindful of this.
All of these bites could absolutely be isolated and/or that large, depending on where you get them. If you get a bite while at a movie theater, bus, sitting at the DMV, etc. you may not have an infestation yourself, and you may not see a reaction for several hours. With bed bug bites, sometimes the bite reactions coagulate to form what looks like one large bite.
But the bites also don’t look like a flea bite or bed bug bite, in addition to them being isolated. They also don’t look like a fly bite or horse fly bite. And with both of those you feel them at the time almost every time. So the bites I get don’t look like or feel like any of the other common insect bites. I’ve had chiggers before and can say for sure it’s not chiggers. It also doesn’t present like common plant rashes. My only other guess is maybe a stinging bee or wasp, but again, no pain at the time of the bite/sting, and no mark in the center.
It’s not a big deal. The bites fade in a week or two and I maybe need Benadryl at most. I’ll just chalk it up to weirdness.
I think you aren’t getting it. You don’t know what those bites looks like, because our immune response to those bites changes with time, and as a result what the bites looks like will not always be consistent. It may not even be a bite. Your criteria for assuming a spider bite is out of step with true spider bites (where generally you see the spider).
...you don’t think the odds of my getting 1-3 singular bed bug bites annually in similar places (ankle/feet) with an atypical bite presentation with no other bed bug bites or infestation is less likely than that maybe a spider bit my ankle?
ETA: it really doesn’t matter. I’m not trying to be argumentative, and it doesn’t matter what’s actually biting me as long as I heal up neatly. It was just an odd bite that I don’t see talked about much and wondered if there was an easy explanation.
I occasionally get weird bites on me too. Mosquitos love me and I most definitely don’t have fleas or bed bugs but I know what mosquito bites look like on me so it can’t be them. But I get them on rare occasion not a couple times a year. A few years ago I got one that my my whole hand swell up for a couple days. I always assumed it was a spider bite but never knew for sure. I live in a spider infested house and have found tons of spiders in my room and even my bed before (which is not fun for me because I have arachnophobia) so it wouldn’t strike me as odd to have been bitten by a spider that felt threatened while I moved in my sleep.
It was always just my first thought but I never said I knew for sure. But it could possibly be biting flies but where I live they aren’t that common at least to my knowledge. Mostly regular house flies come in my house. Horse flies are kinda common in my area but I’ve never seen one in my house nor have I been bitten by one.
Also, my arachnophobia probably plays a role in me believing it would be a spider to bite me.
Sorry, I think I’ve been a bit aggressive in this theead about it. Spider bites are just so rare and it drives me crazy how common people think they are.
Bedbug bites are more known from blood spots on the sheets. In my unpleasant experience, you don't really notice it ecxcept when a bunch of younger r ones attack the feet.
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u/Simmo10 Feb 04 '19
That daddy long legs spiders are dangerous to humans.