[potatochup]

In case anyone is interested, Katipo bites are extremely uncommon. 2 deaths ever and 1 bite recorded from 1951 to 2012.

> Hornabrook, in his 1951 review of the early literature on katipo spider bites, found a total of 22 cases, including 2 deaths. Since 1951, there has been only one reported case of a katipo bite, involving severe myocarditis in a 22-year-old man, despite katipo spiders inhabiting coastal beach dunes around New Zealand.

[1] https://sciblogs.co.nz/griffins-gadgets/2012/03/09/bitten-by...

[dwd]

In comparison around 2000 people are bitten by redback spiders in Australia each year.

Bites were historically even more common when everyone had a dunny out the back.

[pvaldes]

Those spiders bite to protect its nest in the high grasses. It was a uncommon danger in cereal fields, when people harvested in shorts with a sickle, but currently everybody use machines for that.