I couldn't imagine ever buying another bunch of plastic-wrapped bananas without hearing from the experts.
I feel sooooooooooooooo much better now...NOT!
What draws spiders to bananas and grapes—and what should consumers and produce workers who find the potentially deadly critters in their fruit do?
To find out, we spoke with Linda Rayor, a spider expert and senior research associate in Cornell University's entomology department.
How common is it to find a spider in grocery store fruit—and are spiders more common in grapes and bananas from certain regions?
For the bananas, you have a reasonable chance of getting them in ones imported from anywhere in Central or South America, the main sources of the fruit. I have no idea of the actual risk, but there are different types of wandering and huntsman spiders throughout Latin America. You pretty much have a chance of getting black widows—which are found all over the world—in grapes anywhere they grow.
...There are two common groups that are both referred to as "banana spiders," but they're totally different from one another. The first group is the wandering spiders, which is the family Ctenidae, or ctenids. The other is an entirely different family, the Sparassidae, which are the huntsman spiders. They're both big spiders that have relatively long legs. They can both easily be the size of the palm of your hand, no problem.
...Wandering spiders and huntsman spiders are really fast, and they do just fine on the ground. Now, I'm personally not all that big on squishing these guys. I think it's a whole lot more interesting to get them in a jar and get them identified. (Yeah, right! I'll do that!)