World's deadliest spider alert closes Aldi supermarket

A supermarket has been shut and the police called in after an alert involving the world’s deadliest spider.



Aldi’s store on the A5 near Nuneaton was closed last night after a family bought a bag of bananas thought to contain the eggs of a Brazilian Wandering Spider.

When they got home they called the police and their home was fumigated and the store closed.

An adult spider was nowhere to be seen and a search has begun to try to find it.

The Aldi store has now reopened.

The eggs have been collected by the Warwickshire Wildlife Sanctuary, based in Nuneaton, and are currently being safely stored.

The Brazilian Wandering spider has been classed as the world’s most venomous arachnid in Guinness World Records since 2010.

In one case, a single spider killed two children in São Sebastião, Brazil.

In 2005, a British man spent a week in hospital after he was bitten by a Brazilian Wandering spider that had travelled to the country in a shipment of bananas.

James Ship, an expert at Stratford Butterfly Farm, which also houses arachnids, said if bitten by the spider “you would have about six hours’ worth of pain”.

He added: “If you weren’t able to get anti-venom within those six hours, it can lead to paralysis and in some cases it can lead to death.”

Geoff Grewcock, who runs the Warwickshire Wildlife Sanctuary, said: “We had a call from the family who had bought the bananas from Aldi and there was a clump of eggs in there.

“The bananas came from Brazil and it is believed they are from a Brazilian Wandering Spider. They can be deadly and the question now is where is the adult?

“We searched all around the house and their car, and also the mother-in-law’s car as she had picked them up as well.”

A Wandering Spider has been found locally before - one was discovered in a warehouse in Coventry in 2011 and taken to KBN Reptiles in City Arcade.

The creepy crawly was later given a home at Stratford Butterfly Farm.

The latest incident comes just a week after another Brazilian Wandering Spider was found at a warehouse in Tamworth.

Panic over! The eggs found in a bunch of Aldi bananas don’t belong to the world’s deadliest spider

Unlock your doors and put down the heavy artillery, everyone, because the spider eggs found in a bunch of Aldi bananas – said to have belonged to the world’s most venomous spider – were in fact laid by a harmless species.

Keith and Laura Hobbs left their home in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, and fled to a nearby hotel after they discovered masses of spider eggs inside a bunch of bananas bought from the Hinckley, Leicestershire, branch of Aldi – and the mother nowhere in sight.

The eggs were believed to belong to the Brazilian Wandering Spider, named in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most venomous of its kind. It can kill a human in just two hours and has legs as long as 6in.

But independent analysis of the spider eggs has found that they do not, in fact, belong to the Brazilian Wandering Spider. Instead, they were laid by a harmless species.

‘The safety of our customers is our absolute number one priority and as such, the bananas in question were immediately removed from the store as a precautionary measure,’ said an Aldi spokesman.

‘Following independent expert analysis, we can confirm that the eggs in question were totally harmless and not from the Brazilian Wandering Spider (Phoneutria fera).

‘Whilst our bananas are of the highest quality and delivered by one of the world’s largest suppliers these incidents, whilst extremely rare, can occur and we apologise for the distress caused to Mr Hobbs and his family.

‘The Watling Street Store in Hinckley is now fully open to customers.’

What a relief.