On spiders and eyeballs
Funnel Web with venom by dnatheist (cc by)
It turns out that there IS actually enough vascular tissue in your eye to carry funnel web venom to your heart. Not enough to need anti-venom, but enough to make your heart do very strange things and enough to make you go a very strange colour. A trip to the emergency room ensued.
The next day a trip to the opthomologist revealed that the venom had acted like a strong acid/ alkaline and burned a hole in the iris, just missing the pupil (no glass cuts thankfully!). Long-term, the sight in my left eye is a bit worse than it should be. I also get "spider eye": if I'm tired or stressed or jetlagged, my spider eye goes incredibly red, hot and bloodshot for about 24 hours. It's not the most spectacular spidey-super-power of them all, but I'm happy enough to have it :)
Alice Russel-Wallace discusses why Shaun of the Dead is THE definitive opthamological treatment for spider envenomation incidents.
