“As soon as she realized she wasn’t in danger, she was doing great,” Garcia said. “She’d already started building a web, and as soon as we offered her some fruit flies, she ate them immediately.”
Although black widows are usually very shy, Broccoli seems naturally adventurous, spending a lot of time outside of her cave.
While black widow bites can be painful, black widows aren’t as fatal as people think they are. Human deaths from being bitten by a black widow are actually extremely rare — and in many cases, the spiders don’t even emit venom. They have the power to control whether a bite administers it, so unless they feel threatened, they usually won’t bother you.
“It takes a lot for them to actually make venom, so they use it very wisely,” Garcia said. “You literally almost have to squish them for them to release it. They don’t just go around biting people for fun. They’d much rather use their energy to eat.”