He was playing by a river when he saw it. A brightly colored spider, black and red, hidden beneath a rock.
For an 8-year-old boy from Vichuloma, in Oruro (Bolivia), it wasn’t a danger: it was an opportunity. A Spider-Man fan, he was convinced that a bite would give him superpowers. So he let the black widow bite his hand.
He went home as if nothing had happened. But as the hours passed, he began to feel body aches and intense muscle spasms. When his mother asked him what was wrong, he confessed what he had done. First, they took him to a health center in Vinto and then to San Juan de Dios Hospital in Oruro. Several media outlets reported that he was admitted to intensive care and managed to recover.
According to the Oruro Departmental Health Service, the boy wanted to become Spider-Man. It wasn’t the first such case in Bolivia: in 2020, three children aged 12, 10 and 8 from Chayanta (Potosí) also let a black widow bite them after watching a movie about the superhero.