Expert comment provided by Prof Adam Hart, professor of conservation ecology at the University of Gloucestershire.
In the UK, hospitalisations from false widow spiders reached 100 in 2025.
That’s significantly higher than the figure from a decade before (47 hospitalisations in 2015).
Some have called the false widow spider the UK’s most “dangerous,” though speaking to HuffPost UK, Prof Adam Hart, professor and entomologist, said “serious reactions are rare”.
We asked him why these numbers are rising, how to spot false widow spiders, and what to do if we see them.
English (US)