Two-Striped Telamonia - Email Hoax | Filipino Programmer

Two-Striped Telamonia - Email Hoax

Posted by filipinoprogrammer | 1,722 Views
May 18th, 2007 in Hoaxes |

This email quoted below, which I received from a friend. Carefully read and I will explain what I have found about interesting points:

Dear Friends,

IMPORTANT INFORMATION (pls inform also ur friends w/o emails)
Three women in North Florida turned up at hospitals over

a 5-day period, all with the same symptoms.

Fever, chills, and vomiting, followed by muscular collapse,

paralysis and finally, death.

There were no outward signs of trauma.

Autopsy results showed toxicity in the blood. These women did not know each other and seemed to have nothing in common. It was discovered, however, that they had all visited the
same Restaurant (Olive Garden) within days of their deaths. The Health Department descended on the restaurant , shutting it down. The food, water, and air conditioning were all inspected and tested, to no avail.

The big break came when a waitress at the restaurant was rushed to the hospital with similar symptoms. She told doctors that she had been on vacation, and had only went to the restaurant to pick up her check.

She did not eat or drink while she was there, but had used the restroom.

That is when one toxicologist, remembering an article he had read, drove out to the restaurant, went into the restroom and lifted the toilet seat .

Under the seat, out of normal view, was a small spider. The spider was captured and brought back to the lab, where it was determined to be the Two-Striped Telamonia (Telamonia dimidiata), so named because of its reddened flesh color.&nb sp; This spider’s venom is extremely toxic, but can take several days to take effect. They live in cold, dark,
damp climates, and toilet rims provide just the right atmosphere.

Several days later a lawyer from Jacksonville showed up at a hospital emergency room. Before his death, he told the doctor, that he had been away on business, had taken a flight from Indonesia , changing planes in Singapore , before returning home. He did NOT visit (Olive Garden),
while there. He did (as did all of the other victims) have what was determined to be a puncture wound, on his right buttock. Investigators discovered that the flight he was on had originated in India .

The Civilian Aeronautics Board (CAB) ordered an
immediate inspection of the toilets of all flights from India and discovered the Two-Striped Telamonia (Telamonia dimidiata) spider’s nests on 4 different planes!

It is now believed that these spiders can be anywhere in the country.

So please, before you use a public toilet, lift the seat to check for spiders. It can save your life!

And please pass this on to everyone you care about.

After reading this email, my first question that came up to my mind is the spider’s name, I quickly searched on Google information about the Telamonia dimidiata spider. Top results already indicated that some email hoax is spreading using this spider information, which already justified that this is another email hoax. I did not pay attention on the Hoax information at this time and continued searching for the spider’s information. And this is what I found out:

Telamonia dimidiata

is a jumping spider found in various Asian tropical rain forests, in foliage in wooded environments

females can reach a body length of 9 to 11 mm, males up to 9 mm

Again I searched for information about jumping spiders

jumping spider types are more than 500 described genera and over 5,000 species, making it the largest family of spiders with about 13% of all species

jumping spiders live in a variety of habitats. Tropical forests harbor the most species, but they are also found in temperate forests, scrub lands, deserts, the intertidal zone (in Malaysia), even mountains (one species is reported to have been the spider collected at the highest elevation, on the slopes of Mt. Everest.

jumping spiders are generally recognized by their eye pattern.

jumping spiders are generally diurnal, active hunters. Their well developed internal hydraulic system extends their limbs by altering the pressure of body fluid (blood) within them. This enables the jumping spiders to jump without having large muscular legs like a grasshopper.

Some jumping spiders may bite to protect themselves if disturbed. However, jumping spiders usually escape and hide, and will only bite if provoked and cornered. While the bite of a larger jumping spider can be painful, only a few species produce any other effects. Almost all spiders (except hackled orb-weavers) have venom, but the venom of most spiders is not worse than the venom of a bee

The last facts proves that Two-Striped Telamonia does not have the ability to kill a human. Which definitely proves by fact that the email is a hoax. With this all laid out and proven, I did also a last search of facts generally about spider’s venom. And here are the facts I found:

All spiders have fangs! And, yes, they almost all have venom in them. Lucky for us, most spider poison will not harm people because it is quite weak. Most spiders use their venom to paralyze its insect victim long enough to devour it. For other spiders, their poison is strong enough to kill their prey. Of course, this also comes in handy when being attacked by a predator.

There are a few spiders with poison strong enough to cause pain or even some nerve damage in humans. These spiders include the Black Widow and the Brown Recluse spiders. If left untreated, death could result.

People usually associate Tarantulas with the people-killing kind of poison. This is untrue. They have small poison glands and will be about as painful as a hornet or bee sting.

I hope this enlighten some of you not just about ways on deciding to forward a recently received email which ask you to tell all your friends about ASAP. But also about spider in general.

References
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telamonia_dimidiata
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_spider
www.kidzone.ws/lw/spiders/facts03.htm

Hoax and Related Information on this Topic
www.hoax-slayer.com/toilet-spider-hoax.html

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