Young Spider-Man fan encourages black widow to bite him in attempt to get superpowers

An eight-year-old Spider-Man fan in Vichuloma, Bolivia reportedly encouraged a black widow spider to bite his hand in the hopes that he’d gain superpowers.

As reported by The Mirror, the young boy apparently found the spider underneath a rock when he was playing by a river at the end of July. He reportedly placed it on his hand and provoked it until it eventually bit him. He then captured the spider in a jar and went home.

Soon after that, the child’s body began to ache, and he began experiencing severe muscle contractures. Despite this, he refused to tell his parents what had happened until his conditioned worsened further. At this point, he was rushed to hospital.

Thankfully, he was okay - the doctors gave him an antidote serum. “The serum is a specific antidote against the venom, which neutralises the toxicity of the poison in the person’s body so it does not have any effect,” the health department explained (via the Mirror).

After he recovered, he directly admitted that he "wanted to become Spider-Man". His mother added that he's a "huge fan of Spider-Man and loves to watch the movies".

“The child, without calculating the risks, picked it up and, according to him, put it on the back of his hand where the arachnid made the respective bite,” head of the zoonotic diseases programme for the Departmental Health Service of Oruro, Ernesto Vásquez, said.

He continued: “We are extremely concerned because it came to our attention from the analysis and responses from the child after he had recovered that he used the arachnid for one simple purpose. He wanted to become Spider-Man."

Vásquez has encouraged parents to have conversations with their kids in order to prevent incidents like this from happening again in the future, due to the “very unfortunate” potential consequences (via ABC.es, translated by Google.)

“These black arachnids with red backs are black widows that do not cause any effect to become Spider-Man, on the contrary, they are putting their lives at risk,” Vásquez said.