Man claims a spider laid eggs inside his toe during cruise and hatched baby inside it
**WARNING: CONTAINS CONTENT SOME READERS MAY FIND UPSETTING**
There are some things that just seem more like an absolute nightmare than real life.
Like, you know, a spider biting your toe and laying eggs inside it. Yeah, gross.
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And that’s exactly what this man reckons happened to him.
Colin Blake claims he was bitten by a wolf spider while holidaying in France.
The man from Cramlington, Northumberland, was blissfully enjoying his 35th wedding anniversary on a cruise when he says his big toe turned purple overnight.
He told BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime he was bitten while enjoying a nice outdoors meal with his wife.
What a way to kill the mood.
So, Blake paid a visit to the ship’s doctor, where he was told that the swelling of his toe was caused by a wolf spider.
Things got worse for the bloke after this, as his toe began to look like it was infected.
And prepare yourself for this one, when medical staff cut his big piggy open with a scalpel, milk-like pus came out of it.
Yeah, I’m gagging too.
Blake claims that spider eggs were seen in this toe liquid.
Once he got back to the UK, he had hospital treatment and put on a course of antibiotics to reduce the toe swelling.
Thankfully, Blake and his big, big toe are set to make a full recovery.
Now that you’re completely freaked out, it’s probably worth mentioning that experts have completely disputed the claims a spider could have laid its eggs in his foot.
Bet you didn’t expect that twist, did you?
Dr Sara Goodacre from the University of Nottingham told BBC News: “I can't possibly see how it could be true at all because I know about their biology.
"[The egg sacs] take quite a while to spin. The spider venom is not necrotising, it is designed to paralyse a fruit fly."
Differing from Blake’s claims, Dr Goodacre explained that when a wolf spider lays its eggs, they’re kept in a substance that looks like a ball of cotton.
And therefore, she added that there are no reports suggesting these eggs could live in the (gag-inducingly) described ‘pus-infected wound’.
“There is no European wolf spider that could really penetrate the skin,” Dr Goodacre said.
Plus, the British Arachnological Society also called this whole thing ‘implausible’.
The initial report of Blake’s bite was based on the info he gave to a hospital, which made reference to a Peruvian wolf spider.
So, while it may have been a nightmare for him, it seems it possibly wasn’t quite real life.
Jess Battison