Meet The Man Who Found The World's Most Venomous Spider In A Bag Of Bananas That He Bought At A Local Supermarket

Neil Langley thought he was just dealing with an ordinary bunch of bananas from a local supermarket, until he spotted something far more alarming tucked between the fruit. What he found in the bag was not a harmless house spider, but one of the most venomous spiders in the world.

The 53-year-old office worker in the UK had bought the bananas from Asda and packed them away the day before, never expecting a Brazilian wandering spider to be hiding inside. He only noticed it later at his desk, and by then the situation had already become a lot more serious.

It was a close call, and the spider ended up with a very different destination than the supermarket checkout. SWNS

This is 53-year-old Neil Langley, an office worker in the UK. He bought a bunch of bananas from Asda, a local supermarket, and got the surprise of a lifetime when he looked at the bananas while sitting at his desk and noticed something unusual about them.

He saw a spider lurking between the bananas that he had packaged himself the day before, and he was incredibly lucky that this spider didn't bite him. It turns out that this spider was one of the most venomous in the world: the wandering spider from Brazil, which is also known to inhabit Central America.

Wiki

"I bought a bunch of four or five bananas at ASDA and put them in a bag, but I didn’t notice the spider until I was at my desk the next day," Neil said.

SWNS

I was lucky it hadn’t crawled out at home or in my work bag."

The spider caught Neil's attention from the corner of his eye, and when he looked closer, he thought it looked different from the spiders he normally sees in the UK, as it was larger and had a range of colors. With the help of his curious and somewhat frightened co-workers, he managed to get the spider into a plastic bag. They immediately began brainstorming about what to do with it.

This also echoes the AITA drama where a woman refused her boyfriend’s pet tarantula at a family gathering

I was lucky it hadn't crawled out at home or in my work bag.

"I didn’t really think that it was threatening, but some of my colleagues started to get a bit concerned about it."

"We weren’t sure what to do with it. We’re on the sixth floor, so it’s hard to know how to get rid of that sort of thing. At one stage, we discussed flushing it down the toilet, but that seemed a bit unfair to the poor thing," Neil said.

They eventually called the RSPCA to try to identify what type of spider it was. The RSPCA confirmed it was indeed a Brazilian wandering spider, known for its deadly neurotoxins that can kill a human. It is also known as the armed spider.

One bite from this spider will leave you struggling to breathe, losing control of all your muscles, experiencing extreme pain, and it will even give a man an uncomfortable erection for a few hours, so don't get any ideas!

What did they end up doing with the spider?

"Eventually, a colleague who is an animal lover put it in a cereal box and gave it to the RSPCA, who took it away," Neil said. "It must have made a difference to the cats and dogs they usually get called out to."

The world's most venomous spider now has a new home at the Bristol Zoo.

Before you blame “bad luck,” read what a doctor said about bananas being the “most risky fruit” everyone loves.