The alleged arachnid was spotted by the store manager, fire officials said (Picture: Manfred Wimmer/Krems Volunteer Fire Department)
An Austrian supermarket had to be evacuated after a banana-loving spider that can cause long-lasting powerful erections with its bite was spotted.
With legs reaching up to seven inches, the Brazillian wandering spider’s bite is a cocktail of poisons that can also cause nausea, hypothermia and convulsions.
‘The venom boosts nitric oxide, a chemical that increases blood flow,’ according toLive Science, which can prompt ‘long, painful erections’.
This isn’t usually on people’s shopping lists – so the Penny shop in Krems an der Donau, 45 miles west of Vienna, has been closed since Tuesday morning after one was apparently seen.
The store manager phoned the fire department after spotting a 10cm tall black-and-red spider crawling around the store’s fruit section.
While the species of spider wasn’t immediately identified, officials believe it to be a Brazilian wandering spider, Austrian daily Österreich reported.
The supermarket has been shut since while the branch is cleaned, owners said (Picture: Manfred Wimmer/Krems Volunteer Fire Department)
When fire services arrived, the arachnid had all but vanished.
‘The branch manager of the supermarket discovered the spider shortly before 7.30am while preparing the fresh goods – specifically when he opened a banana box,’ the local fire brigade, Freiwillige Feuerwehr Krems, said.
Four fire officers sealed every box of bananas at the store, while police alerted the Red Cross as a precaution.
‘Fortunately, we are prepared for almost all eventualities,’ commander of the Krems fire brigade, Gerhard Urschler, said.
A spokesman for the Rewe retail group that owns the store told Österreich on Wednesday: ‘A specialist is currently clarifying which species of spider it is.’
Rewe told the Austrian news agency APA the following day that ‘comprehensive cleaning and disinfection measures’ are now underway to prepare the store for reopening next week.
Though the spider, ‘despite an extensive search’, hasn’t actually been found by authorities, the spokesman added.
Fire officials didn’t track down the spider (Picture: Manfred Wimmer/Krems Volunteer Fire Department)
‘All measures are for safety and are carried out meticulously so that the branch can be reopened,’ he said.
Brazillian wandering spiders, otherwise called Phoneutria according to the German Natural History Museum, are often found in South America and like to hang out on banana leaves or bunches.
They don’t tend to bite – very rarely, according to one study – but being abruptly plonked from their home in a banana stalk to a supermarket aisle in front of gigantic ‘five-fingered predators’, also called humans, can be ‘stressful’ for them.
So as much as people think of them as aggressive, their bite is only used in defensively on humans.
‘However, we emphasise that even if some of these studies show that these spiders are rarely extremely dangerous for humans, this should nobody entrap to see it as a challenge or an invitation to “handle” Phoneutria species incautiously!’ the museum, the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Karlsruhe, said.
Several researchers have even looked at incorporating the spider’s poison into drugs for erectile dysfunction.
The venom, as one outlet put it, is ‘nature’s Viagra’.
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Not exactly on someone’s shopping list.