A curator from an Oklahoma Zoo believes that there might be a mistaken identity on the spider found in a grocery store early this week.

According to Tulsa Zoo curator of aquariums and herpetology Barry Downer, the spider based on what he saw on videos and photographs was a Huntsman spider and not the lethal Brazilian wandering spider.

“There’s pretty definitive evidence it has been misidentified,” Downer was quoted as saying.

However, the spider has been destroyed by Terry Childs, an animal facilities manager at the University of Tulsa and the one who identified the spider as deadly. He reasoned that a university administrator asked him to destroy it for safety reasons.

Downer could not understand why Childs did not preserve the spider for further study. He said that even through the spider’s bite can be deadly – it rarely happens. A spokesman for the university said that they are looking into the situation.

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