Soldato
Whilst you are right that tarantulas aren't considered "true spiders" (they're "spiders" but are Mygalomorph rather than Aranea) they are certainly venomous!
Why are they not considered true spiders? They look pretty ****ing scary and spidery to me
I mus admit, Imread such stories of nature killing people in far off places and frankly I don't care.
It's like elephant crushes man on game reserve, well bad luck, stuff happens.
One thing is certain from the mostly made up articles, Indian spider experts know aboutnas much about spiders as reporters do about accurately portraying events.
I don't think it's fair to say all Indian spider experts know nothing about spiders. An expert is an expert, no matter what their origins/ethnicity/race etc. these people clearly are not experts. I hate spiders and without looking at pictures or doing further research, even I could tell the spiders from eachother (not that I'd go anywhere near)
One thing to say is that this story is quite clearly BS.
Indian villages are ****ed up places in general (a lot are very nice places, but they're the minority). They are dominated by religion and a distinct lack of science or education. There probably have been spider bites. But I'm guessing there were three or four spiders and some poor kids played with them because they didn't know any better and they paid the price
Word spreads very quickly in tiny villages and stories become exaggerated ridiculously.