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Spider bites and risky remedies: the case of Corsica

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Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean sea, between the coasts of France and Italy. Ask any of its inhabitants, and they'll tell you it's the most beautiful place on Earth. Sure, islanders all over the world will often claim the same about their island, but it's hard to deny that Corsica is absolutely gorgeous: majestic mountains plunging into the azure sea, heavenly beaches and coves, sand dunes covered in wild flowers, snow-capped peaks shining under the blue sky, their slopes dotted with picturesque little villages...  It is also a place blessed with an extreme scarcity of dangerous land animals. It doesn't have any venomous snakes or medically significant scorpions. Mosquito-borne yellow fever and malaria used to take their toll on Corsicans unlucky enough to work and live in swampy areas, but were eradicated during the twentieth century. While bilharzia, a deadly disease caused by a parasite carried by a freshwater snail, has been making a worrying comeback in...
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Spider Tales 5: Tarantula and tarantella

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Tarantula. A famous word for a famous animal. Everyone knows what a tarantula is: it's a massive, impressive, hairy spider. This Tliltocatl albopilosum is typically what one has in mind when thinking "tarantula". Nowadays, the spiders colloquially known as "tarantulas" are species in the family Theraphosidae, which is the most diverse (with over 1100 described species ) and the most famous family of the infra-order Mygalomorphae . The smallest Theraphosidae species are about 10 mm long, which is not small by spider standards, and most of them are large to very large. The largest representatives of this family, species in the genus Theraphosa , are the largest and heaviest spiders on Earth, which can reach up to 12 cm in body length and 170g in body mass. Besides their often impressive size, many Theraphosidae sport beautiful colours and patterns, and many New World taxa, such as species in the genera Tliltocatl , Brachypelma , Aphonopelma and Grammostola , are...
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Arachnolingo 2, part III: Medically significant, venomous, dangerous: Why should we care?

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This is part 3 of an article that was so long it became a trilogy. You can click here for part one , about what "venomous" really means, and here for part two , about the term "medically significant", and how it differs from "venomous" and "dangerous". "Venomous" and "poisonous" don't mean what most people think they mean . What most people actually mean when they use these words generally is " medically significant ". Does it matter that much, though? Is it that important to use "medically significant" instead? If that's what everyone understands when we say "venomous" or "poisonous", why not simply use them that way in everyday conversations, and keep the fancy talk for expert discussions only? Isn't it just pedantic and useless to correct people about it all the time? That would be a fair and valid point, if these words were not purposefully used in the wrong way by p...
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