Fitness: Friendly Fangs
“I should’ve just handed ‘em the keys to the house because they ended up driving me out anyway.”
—Resident who walked away from a house infested with hobo spiders.
Scientists are becoming interested in deadly spider venom for fighting human illness and as a bio-insecticide to protect crops. We kid you not; spiders known for a flesh-eating venom may actually hold the key to a cure for chronic pain. Their highly toxic venom may also reduce inflammation, even end erectile dysfunction.
But don’t throw the Viagra out just yet.
It seems biochemists and molecular biologists have been harvesting and investigating venom from some pretty deadly critters—snakes, scorpions, the Australian box jellyfish, even the lethal alphabet cone—but so far have come up empty. Enter the hobo.
This creepy eight-legged is not something you’d want to meet in a dark alley—or in your bed, either, where they tend to gather. Hobos like houses because there’s a steady supply of food and it’s fairly predator-free. It’s also a good place to propagate fast. See, unlike most spiders—solitary, hidden, retiring—hobos aggregate by the thousands. Before you know it, spiderlings are crawling all over: up the drainpipe and out of your sink, infesting the cupboards and closets, doing their worst in the corners. And these guys will love your home. In fact they’ll like it so much, they may never leave.
And that’s the trouble. Their aggression increases along with their numbers. Smooshing a few just sets them off. And while we wouldn’t go so far as to say they break out a little towel and bar of soap when you break out the bugspray, still, dousing them doesn’t seem to have much effect. Unfazed by humans, they’ll soon be lurking in shoes, loose clothes—even your dishwasher!—and, bet upon it, sooner or later, you’re gonna put a part of you where you wish you hadn’t.
Here’s the thing. When hobos bite it’s not your typical boo-friggin’ hoo mosquitoey bite, oh no. Their toxin destroys the protein matrix that binds your skin and muscles together. The prickly red mark they leave on the bite site can grow to the size of an overripe mango before bursting. Eewwww!
That’s because these many-leggeds evolved a “biochemically complex” venom designed to put “lights out” to their prey as quickly as possible. (It also turns the victim’s innards into a slurry that the spider sucks up through strawlike fangs. Yummy.) A hobo bite won’t turn you to mush, but the venom can produce a flesh-eating necropsis that will leave scars.
But in targeting the nervous system, the venom holds promise; theraputic benefits for treating a variety of nervous system disorders, including chronic pain, may be extracted.
Over millions of years the spiders apparently supercharged a hormone that’s used in the molting process to produce a lethal concoction they inject into prey. (Molting involves a spider outgrowing itself—like all insects they have an exoskeleton, a skeleton on the outside—and they simply split along the back to allow their bigger self to emerge. The soft spider then finds a bolthole to hide in until its new exoshell hardens.
Estimates put the yearly economic impact of persistent pain, the kind that even morphine can’t mask, in the trillions of dollars worldwide. From the unlikely source of spider venom may come not only relief from chronic, debilatiting pain but from the headaches and body-aches of daily living as well. More interesting for athletes, as a topical agent it will reduce soreness and tightness caused by the inflammation that follows a workout.
Only hobo spider venom has shown enough promise to schedule clinical tests on humans, and your near-term future may well include pest-free plants, less aches and pains, and more stamina in the bedroom, thanks to this dangerous creepy-crawly.
So next time you pick up a book to smash a scurrying spider, better reconsider: that little dude might be holding your girlfriend’s happiness inside of those fangs. Just put the book down and go quietly away, OK? Besides, it eats flies.
For more information from Miami Beach’s premier personal trainer contact crazykidjoey@gmail.com
