Help Identify Spiders and More
These reader reports and photos were collected over sixteen years of bite discussions on this page. Warning: Some of these pictures may show a scary spider or a bite that has become infected and could be considered disturbing to some, so if you don’t like the sight of rotted skin or exposed bone, this may not be for you. However, it does drive home the importance of seeking medical attention before it’s too late! Want to compare more photos? Start with our spider bite photo library.
Reader Bite Reports: Six Cases From the Archive
Sixteen years of bite reports came through this page. These six, condensed and attributed by first name, cover the range from mild to nearly losing a finger. The pattern across all of them: the bite itself was rarely the problem. The infection afterward was, and speed to a doctor decided how each story ended.
Claire: the mild one
Claire came home from Florida with an itchy raised bump on her neck and a smaller rock-hard one at her hairline. When her throat started feeling sore she saw a doctor, who called it a bug bite, likely spider, recommended topical Benadryl, and wrote an antibiotic prescription to fill only if it got worse. It never did. Most bites end exactly like this, and hers is here so the ones below stay in proportion.
Christina: the textbook response
Christina felt a light sting on her heel carrying groceries in at night, and by morning pain was shooting up her leg. She was in the ER less than 12 hours after the bite. Antibiotics, steroids, ice in 15-minute stretches, no heat, and firm instructions not to pop the quarter-sized blister. It broke on its own on the ninth day and healed clean, and she credits going in fast for how easily she got off.
Lindsey: the hole between her eyes
Lindsey woke with a swollen red area between her eyes, watched a red line crawl down beside her nose, and then watched the blackened center fall away and leave a hole. Doctors put her on antibiotics, scraped the wound to restart healing blood flow, and lined up a surgeon consult for the scar. Her advice is the page’s advice: discoloration or a traveling red line means medical attention, now.
Leah: a week of hospital visits
What Leah took for a wasp sting became a rock-hard, ping-pong-ball swelling with a red line running toward her elbow. The hospital lanced it, put her on IV antibiotics three times a day for a week, and finally removed the infection’s capsule, a white sac the size of half a cotton ball. The red line faded almost immediately after. That sac was not something the spider left behind; it was the wall her body built around the abscess, and it is why deep infections need a doctor’s hands, not a squeeze.
Jack: the site talked him into going
Jack posted a photo of a small bite on his cheek that had ballooned overnight, and the site’s answer at the time was blunt: nothing near an eye is worth gambling on. He sent the photo to his doctor from a business trip, got diagnosed with cellulitis, a skin infection likely seeded by the bite, and started a strong antibiotic the same day. The doctor’s postscript stuck: waiting the weekend had been a mistake, and one more day would have meant fever and a much worse week.
Allen: one squished spider, one saved finger
Allen mashed a small black spider with white spots in an ice chest and thought nothing of the tiny mark on his finger. Five days later a surgeon was scraping infected tissue out of it and telling him he had been an hour of hesitation from amputation. Four days on IV antibiotics and weeks of physical therapy later, he got nearly all the motion back. The spider, from his description, was probably a harmless jumping spider. The infection did not care.
If your bite looks like any of these, our spider bite treatment page covers first aid and the warning signs, and the bite identification chart helps you sort spider from staph from bed bugs.
my friends 4 year old daughter has a red circle like medium sized scabbed over bite. one of the bites pus but the others ore just scabbed over what could this be and wher can i find pictures to compare
EMERGENCY: THERE ARE 2 ON MY ARMS, ONE ON EACH, 5 ON THE LEFT LEG, 4 ON MY LEFT FOOT, 3 ON MY RIGHT LEG AND 5 ON MY RIGHT FOOT: I was bitten 17 TIMES by a spider in the night. Woke up with huge itchy bites. I am concerned since I was bitten a multitude of times. The area has a white middle then it immediately goes to red and then pink around that. I am also getting strange patchy red rashes that itch in places that I wasn’t bitten. They’re not getting bigger since I have been putting on creams to keep from itching them. PLEASE HELP!!!!
I got bit last night on my foot nd it swelled. It finally went down early this morning. I have two red dots on my foot still. no pain, itching.. or swelling. Should I b conserned
I’ve had good luck with a bentonite clay mud pack ( like a facial mud masque) on spider bites. Internally, I like wild yam root. I do 2 Tbsp every 2 hours for pain / swelling. Can loosen bm’s.
My son was bite by something and in the morning when he woke up he told me his ear hurt when I looked at it it looked just like a typical bug bite and 24 hours later it look like a big blister on the back of his ear.
I got a spider bite a while ago and it grew to a very large knot on my shin that itched and ached. It prevented me from walking very well and was bright red. The knot grew so awfully large that it started to constrict the circulation in my leg. My dad de decided to put a compression wrap, which helped with the swelling and prevented me from itching it.
I have multiple bites they start real small just red dots then get VERY itchy and it started getting bigger and now I am getting more bites after i washed my clothes bed sheets and pretty much sprayed the room for bugs
Hey, I went to a hotel in Oklahoma this past Friday, and when I woke up I saw a small red bump on my right leg. It didn’t hurt, just itched. Then throughout the next few days, the thing started to get bigger! It’s not really big but I’m freaked out because it keeps getting bigger. My friend gave me some anti-itch cream for bug bites, and it seemed to make the bite worse! The bite is in one spot on my leg, but there are several bumps around this bump, and what looks like puncture wounds (darker red tiny spots) all over my red, raised-up skin. Also a whitehead-looking thing is on it but the bite looks all welted and stuff.
I have this small, red bite on my thigh. It started out so small, i thought it was a pimple or a rash starting. But gradually it got bigger, more swollen and redder. It hurts just a little when you touch it and it has a very small white center. It is very red but smaller than a finger-nail. I have no other symtoms except that mark. What kind of spider is it????? Thanks :)
John C — I get a reaction like that from chigger bites. They are horribly itchy blisters (that ooze for multiple days if broken). They last over a week, eventually either shrinking again or drying up and falling off. I’ve had them as big as a penny, though other times they are quite small. I’ve had a doctor look at them (they were just fascinated, but mystified). Just seems we get a more substantial allergic reaction that most folks. Using an antihistamine might help.
I woke up with 2 little bites on my wrist. One is still small. The other was bleeding. I think i scratched it in my sleep. I kept it clean and covered a bump formed then my skin fell off now its stabbing and becoming bigger. Im kinda worried. Someone help!?
I went to yosemite and igot in the car and I noticed a red bump about the size of a quarter and it had a red line up to my elbow Its going away now do you know what type of spider it was
i just saw and felt something small that looked like a spider but i dun know. it stung a bit and my brain feels like im light headed. any thoughts?
@Jasmine, the spider bite is most likely a black widow bite, the venom causes severe cramping throughout the entire body. In the worst cases is lethal without anti venom, in best cases you get a leg cramp. Be careful when being treated as a great number of people are allergic to the anti venom.
I was bitten by something 3 nights ago behind my knee and it doesn’t really hurt, but itches a tiny bit and seems to be getting really irritated over the days. this morning I woke up and there was a darker red spot towards the top of it, is it a spider bite and/or should I worry about it? Will it go away on it’s own or should I go to the e.r. which I don’t have money for if they give me any prescriptions?
I got bit by some thing under my eye and im pretty sure it was a spider and now when i blink it hurts and i pull my left eye to myleft it hurts to should i see a doctor and is this deadly its been 2 days
Two days ago I found a mark on my leg….it was a small bug-bite looking mark. The only difference was that it had a black center, was SURROUNDED in red, and BURNED. I marked it with a sharpie to see if it grew any. The next morning I woke up and checked it. The entire mark had grown to be about 50% bigger!! I decided to call my doctor.
Once arriving he said that it looked like a spider bite because it was creating a ulceration and that he needed to remove it. Once it was removed I used antibiotic cream and a bandage that night. I woke up, washed the bite with soap and water and had a normal day wearing shorts. It looked like regular raw skin. About 3 hours ago I looked at the bite. It was turning black around the edges. It is throbbing and burning, its not very comfortable . I’m wondering what I should do! Should I tell my doctor, or nurse it myself? Does anyone know what kind of spider could have bitten me? I live in Northern Arkansas. Thank you very much.
-BYE!
Right when I got bit the area swelled up and then in 40 min kinda disappeared it still feels funny could it come back?
A couple of nights ago I woke up with the distinct feeling of something crawling on my right arm. I jumped out of bed, shook my linens, looked on the floor and saw nothing. Last summer we had a terrible big, black spider problem in the house. I caught one crawling on me last summer while I slept. I killed him and all the others (at least 2-3 a day). We finally sprayed. I did not see any all winter, spring or even now. Mosquitoes have invited themselves in when the door opens. Some have been huge! We kill them as soon as we see them. I am concerned about these bites. They look strange. Treating them with alcohol and Neosporin.
2 days ago i got bitten by an insect or arachnid (arachnids have 8 legs; insects 6). I have bites all over my upper-right arm and the worst is on my forearm below my wrist. yesterday is was huge and red and swollen and fuss of puss. i saw the doctor and he said it was a spider.
what kind of spider was it?
I laid down in the grass and something bit me on the back then I saw a green spider on a leaf now I have a bunch of little bites on my back :(
I have a small bite that shows a little bit of flesh and when I first found out I had itched it and some skin came off and now it looks like a weird swollen scab and it’s on my ear lobe. What should I do?!
I got a bite on my leg, its been there for about 4 days now. Its red on the outside and a little hard around the outside surface of it, and it has a black dot directly in the middle. Size hasn’t grown much, it’s stayed about the same size last few days, just trying to figure out what kind of bite it is.