The effects of the bite were so painful and harsh that Blair failed to complete the experiment and did not follow through with being bitten a second time.

In the United States each year, about 2,500 people report being bitten by a black widow, but most do not need medical treatment. Some bites have no venom injected--a "dry" bite. In the United States, a 2012 review by the American Association of Poison Control Centers found no deaths from black widows since 1983. Black widows are not especially aggressive spiders, and they rarely bite