Dangerous arachnids - Fake news or reality?

I have taken the liberty of stealing the title of an interesting article recently published by Tobias Hauke and Volker Herzig. We all know that our favorite animal group, scorpions, are infamous in the public among laypersons (and sometimes also among scholars), but there aren't that many reviews addressing the facts concerning the medical importance of scorpions and other arachnid groups.

The present paper walks us through the spiders and scorpions of the world and lists taxa with medical significance, all based on scientific evidence. The article also discuss the results in connection with the growing number of arachnids kept as pets. Scorpions of medical importance is one of my main areas of interest, and based on my experience the article's conclusions are valid.

I recommend this article for all that are interested in spider and scorpion envenomations. It will also be interesting for scorpion enthusiasts keeping scorpions as pets, as the article's language is not too advanced and easily understandable for laypersons.

Abstract:
The public perception of spiders and scorpions is skewed towards the potential harm they can inflict in humans, despite recent scientific evidence that arachnid venom components might be useful as bioinsecticides or even human therapeutics. Nevertheless, arachnids are becoming more popular as pets in Europe, America and Asia, raising the question for regulatory agencies in these regions as to whether they need to take measurements to protect their citizens. In order to decide upon the necessary regulatory steps, they first need to determine which arachnids are actually dangerous to humans. This review therefore provides an overview of the current literature on verified bites and stings from spiders and scorpions with the aim of assessing their potential danger for human health. As a guideline, we also provide a list of those arachnid genera that we consider as potentially dangerous, which includes 10 spider and 11 scorpion genera. The arachnid genera classified as dangerous comprise less than a quarter of all extant scorpion species and only 0.5% of all spiders species, with the actual number most likely being much lower than that, as not all species in those genera might turn out to pose an actual threat for humans. In conclusion, we found that only a small percentage of scorpions and a minute percentage of all spiders can be considered as potentially dangerous to humans. While in some countries of origin the high incidence of envenomations by dangerous arachnids can result in a serious problem to the health system, we assessed the risk that the same species pose when kept as pets under controlled maintenance conditions as significantly lower.

Reference:
Hauke TJ, Herzig V. Dangerous arachnids-Fake news or reality? Toxicon. 2017;138:173-83. [Subscription required for full text]