LIVE SCIENCE - Spiders are common critters. And, as almost all of Earth's 43,000 known spider species are venomous, it is likely that most people have encountered a venomous spider at one point or another.
So that's the bad news. The good news, however, is that of these, only 25 species are known to have killed or caused serious harm to humans. But which spider is the deadliest?
"The deadliest is probably the funnel-web spider and its relatives. It is incredibly rare to have a deadly spider encounter," said Rick Vetter, a retired research associate with the Department of Entomology at University of California, Riverside, whose research focused on medically important spiders.