AN investigation has been launched after it is thought a tropical spider bit a shopper at a Hampshire supermarket.

It is believed that when the woman picked up a bunch of bananas the spider crawled out and sunk its fangs into her hand.

But bosses at Sainsbury's say they are not completely sure it was a spider bite as they haven't caught a creepy crawly - and claim she may have suffered a reaction to the fruit.

The woman noticed a rash on her skin and was rushed from the store to hospital. Today she is recovering at home after her ordeal.

A shop worker - who did not wish to be named - said that the woman looked scared and white-faced when she alerted staff.

Now tests are being carried out to determine if it was a spider in the fruit, which is shipped in from Costa Rica and the Caribbean.

A spokesman for the Broadcut store in Fareham said that until the results were back they could not be certain.

She said: "We will wait for the tests to come back first. It may be that she has had a bad reaction to pesticides on the fruit or the fruit itself. We take these things very seriously and are investigating the allegation and as yet there is no evidence that there was a spider in the store. The customer did not see a spider."

It comes just a week after a store worker at Asda in Chandler's Ford was bitten by a tropical Huntsman spider.

The female worker went to capture the arachnid after it was spotted by a shopper, but it bit through a bag and sank its fangs into her skin.

She fainted on the spot and was rushed to hospital. But after making a swift recovery she was soon back at work. The spider was captured and put in the deep freeze at Marwell Zoological Park, near Winchester.

Southampton University expert Dave Goulson said no one in Britain had ever died from a spider bite. The lecturer at the ecology department at the university said: "If the spider was poisonous you would need an antivenom for the right spider to be used within a few hours.

"With a spider bite, the safest thing to do is take the person to hospital so that they can be checked over. There are dangerous spiders in the world, but there are few which are deadly."