In what appears to be just an urban legend meant to scare people, a British mother has found out that a seemingly harmless bunch of bananas she bought from a supermarket was infected with deadly spiders.

Consi Taylor of Hampton in southwest London developed phobia of buying bananas after she discovered that the £1 bunch of Colombian Fair Trade bananas she bought from supermarket Sainsbury's had been used as a nest of crawly insects.

As the 29-year-old mother of two narrated to the Daily Mail, she had eaten about half of a banana when she noticed the 3mm-long dots that on the fruit's skin that she first thought was just mould or bruising. But when she spotted the white nest at the bottom of the banana, that's when realisation hit her.

The tiny crawlers dropped on her carpet and scurried off into hiding.

"I screamed, it was horrible," she was quoted by the paper as saying. "I'm scared of spiders anyway so I had to get a friend to come round to hoover them up. Then we cleaned the floor with anti-bacterial wipes."

Mrs Taylor was refunded with a £10 voucher when she returned the infected bananas to Sainbury's, but she still wanted to have the insects identified so she photographed the spiders and sent them to a pest control company.

The pest control experts then told her that might be Brazilian wandering spiders, an aggressive and venomous genus of spiders that often hide in banana plants. They also warned that there might still be some that lurked in her house so it might be best if she and her family evacuate until the house has been fully cleaned and fumigated.

Brazilian wandering spiders, which are sometimes called banana spiders because of their inclination to hide in banana plants and fruits, is said to be the deadliest arachnid on the planet. Its bite can cause humans to suffer irregular heat beat, high blood pressure, vomiting, and death.

Mrs Taylor and her 37-year-old husband Richard took their young son and daughter to a hotel and spent three nights there while the pest control experts tried to eradicate the spiders from their three-bedroom home.

The Taylors are now back to their freshly fumigated home. They had spent £1000 for their hotel, fumigation, and dry cleaning bills. Sainsbury's, meanwhile, has paid them £2800 to cover their expenses.

"We do not have rigorous controls on imported products at all stages - from harvesting to transportation - which is why this is so rare," a spokesman from the store said.

And while the pest control company has assured them that it has completely eradicated the insects, Mrs Taylor is still "terrified" that maybe there are survivors.

The scary incident had left Mrs Taylor scared with a phobia of buying bananas, saying, "I still like bananas very much, but I can't put my hand near them in the shop anymore so my husband has to buy them for me now."

This isn't the first time Brazilian wandering spiders have been seen in bananas in Britain.

In 2005, Matthew Stevens, a chef in Somerset, England, was bitten by the arachnids when they hid in a box of bananas delivered to his pub. The arachnids, which are mainly found in tropical countries in South America, attacked Mr Stevens after they hid from the bananas.

The quick-thinking chef took a photo of spider and later showed it to his doctors at Bristol Zoo, who were able to identify the spiders and make a suggestion for its antidote. This later on had helped save Mr Stevens' life.