If you bros weren’t afraid of spiders before, this little dude might put some fear in you—because it can KILL A FUCKING HUMAN BEING with a single bite.
No, you did not read that wrong.
This little spider, which is the size of a tick, actually has the power to wipe out a person’s entire immune system, as scientists have discovered it’s saliva triggers an allergic reaction that can be fatal.
Thankfully, for all of us, the only place these little killers have been found is in the UK in wooded areas, but, for some reason, that’s not really all that comforting for me to hear.
A really smart professor of molecular biology, Jose de la Fuente, added this as to the reason for the body’s reaction from a bite, per Mirror.UK:
“We understand that these allergies are produced by tick bites, but we need to know the precise molecules produced by the tick in the saliva that cause this effect when they bite a vertebrate host.
We believe that there are proteins in the tick saliva modified by a compound called alpha-gal that changes the immune response in humans, so that it is possible to have these allergic reactions.”
Here I was thinking that a wild lion would be the animal that could wipe me out, but, nope, it’s something smaller than a piece of lint.