Three boys let deadly Black Widow bite them 'so they'd turn into Spider-Man'

Three young brothers have been hospitalised after letting a venomous black widow spider bite them in the belief it would turn them into Spider-Man.

The three brothers, aged eight, 10, and 12 and who have not been named, found the spider as they were watching over their sheep in the town of Chayanta, Bolivia.

Their mother was reportedly collecting wood at the time and the boys are said to have come up with the idea that letting the spider bite them would give them superpowers, as happens to Peter Parker in the popular Marvel comic books.

The boys are said to have provoked the spider with a stick before it bit them.

They quickly began suffering from symptoms from the venomous bites, which can include severe muscle pain, abdominal cramps, increased heart rate and muscle spasms.

Their mother then found them crying and took them to the Chayanta health centre where they were given medicine, but their condition did not improve.

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The boys were later taken to a hospital in the town of Llallagua but their condition worsened and they were then transferred to the Children’s Hospital in the Bolivian capital La Paz, according to the Head of Epidemiology of the Health Ministry, Virgilio Pietro.

The brothers were given a serum for their bites and their condition improved after that before they were released from the hospital five days later.

Pietro, who revealed the case at a coronavirus press conference, told parents to take care as “for children everything is real, films are real, dreams could be real, and they (children) are the hope of our life”.

The black widow’s name comes from the fact the female often kills and eats the male after mating.

They are not usually aggressive and although their bites can be deadly, in most cases they are rarely fatal for humans.

The news comes as it has been reported that there has been a "huge increase" in the number of venomous false widow spiders seen in and around homes in the UK in recent weeks.

The increase in sightings is believed to be due to the warm weather and coronavirus lockdown, with more people staying at home and cleaning their gardens, houses and sheds.

False widow spiders - Steatoda Nobilis in Latin - are no bigger than a 20p piece but they have the worst bite out of every spider species in the UK.

They only bite when provoked and tend to cause humans a bee sting-style reaction, but some people can react far worse to it.