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Thread about spiders (not for the arachnophobic!)

rutabowa said:
spiders are ok now. my new fear is off giant hornets:
mandarinia2.jpg
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Not seen a giant hornet - but that looks like a huge beast, but then hornets are a bit bigger than common wasps I recall. Don't ever get stung by the little buggers - it is quite a bit more painful than an ordinary wasp sting. :(
 
You can see it clearly in the enlarged image, and it looks as if the spider has its tea all ready and packaged up in the lower half of the web. :cool:
 
Mumbles274 - that's a beautiful web! And your garden looks great too, I love ponds (also must be a great place for a spider to catch insects) and that one is very pretty :)

One thing I've noticed with my spider is that if she has caught something large she will take it to bed with her (right at the top of the web, in the corner of the window frame) in the morning and munch on it for most of the day when she usually sleeps (which she does with all her legs sticking forward in front of her), I guess she is alternating between sleep and food - but assuming that is the case, when she sleeps she still keeps it clamped in her mandibles. Maybe she eats whilst she is asleep, which would be pretty cool, but it's difficult to tell. She occasionally catches large moths that can take her all day to get through - it's no wonder that she has managed to grow so large.
 
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Leafster said:
Why all the recent sensationalism over the False Widows at the moment? Have I missed something? :confused:

This is the worst one I've seen so far: "Killer spiders on the rampage in Britain" from the Star :facepalm:

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/341071/Killer-spiders-on-rampage-in-Britain

Oh and "The spiders are spreading from the capital to the suberbs" :D
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I know, 'killer spiders' seem to be all the rage in the media recently. No spider bite is pleasant, but neither is it usually any worse than a bee sting at the very worst (and more usually comparable to a mosquito or gnat bite), and there's no UK spider that can cause danger to a healthy adult - the few cases that have been reported are ones with bizarre complications, infection, or allergy related issues. My ex was once bitten on his hand by an especially large teg when he was putting it outside and it was a bit painful and the site got a bit inflamed over the course of a few hours (application of an antihistamine cream helped, as it would with most minor but slightly irritating bites that cause a local reaction), but it was leagues away from being in any way medically significant.
 
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Some tarantulas defend themselves by hurling their hairs at you like spears, rubbing their abdomens with their legs to fire them off. This one's rubbed itself bald.
Brachypelma_smithi,_urticating_hairs.JPG
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Some tarantulas defend themselves by hurling their hairs at you like spears, rubbing their abdomens with their legs to fire them off. This one's rubbed itself bald.
Brachypelma_smithi,_urticating_hairs.JPG
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Poor thing must have been quite frightened to shed that many hairs! Apparently it can be really quite unpleasant if you inhale the hairs. Not that I'd know personally, but it's something that tarantula keepers bear in mind when handling their charges. It must surely be an effective deterrent to any creature snuffling around for food that found a tarantula and thought it a tasty snack!

ETA: referencing your post just above the one quoted: The majority of spiders have 8 eyes. Some have 6. ;)
 
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Anyway, I was rummaging through my random collection of wildlife and nature pictures to choose a new desktop wallpaper, and found this little beauty. A ladybird spider. Interesting pattern on its back, and how similar they are to ladybirds (which are beetles I think). Convergent evolution perhaps, as it is a good warning signal? Its not my picture - its one I took from the Guardian site.

Ladybird Spider in Clouds Hill, Dorset, England by Ian Hughes.jpg
 
farmerbarleymow - that's fairly awesome, and would very much resemble a ladybird to any animal with vision that didn't go into much detail-detection.

I guess it's a form of deterring birds, although a few species of birds will eat a ladybird, most will avoid them because they secrete a chemical that makes them taste bad. So it's a good camouflage to deter birds on the hunt for a snack :)
 
Epona said:
farmerbarleymow - that's fairly awesome, and would very much resemble a ladybird to any animal with vision that didn't go into much detail-detection.

It's a form of deterring birds, although a few species of birds will eat a ladybird, most will avoid them because they secrete a chemical that makes them taste bad. So it's a good camouflage to deter birds on the hunt for a snack :)
Click to expand...

That's got me thinking (well, it is 5.22am and I'm sat here totally sober and rather bored) - if animals use bright colours, especially red or yellow, to signify danger to others, does this work in humans*. So for example, would you be less likely to be the victim of an assault/mugging/stabbing etc. if you wore a red top than say, blue? We all respond to colour, and red is typically seen as a confident one, and perhaps even slightly aggressive as it is so bright and 'in your face'.

There must have been some research on this at some point - perhaps an ignobel winner.

* don't try this experiment out with a polar bear in the Arctic, as it is unlikely to work. ;)
 
farmerbarleymow said:
That's got me thinking (well, it is 5.22am and I'm sat here totally sober and rather bored) - if animals use bright colours, especially red or yellow, to signify danger to others, does this work in humans*. So for example, would you be less likely to be the victim of an assault/mugging/stabbing etc. if you wore a red top than say, blue? We all respond to colour, and red is typically seen as a confident one, and perhaps even slightly aggressive as it is so bright and 'in your face'.

There must have been some research on this at some point - perhaps an ignobel winner.

* don't try this experiment out with a polar bear in the Arctic, as it is unlikely to work. ;)
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I don't think so - purely based on my experience of being out and about with a male friend who was wearing a leopard-print dress in the centre of Sheffield on a busy Friday night - sadly, it very nearly turned nasty. Had he been an actual leopard, I think they'd have run for it, possibly pissing their pants whilst doing so. Cultural conditioning is a far stronger impulse in many modern humans - whether that is for good or ill.
 
This is my favourite spider desktop wallpaper by the way - keeps an eye on you when you're wasting time online. :)

Again, not my picture - I found it somewhere online in the dim distant past.

awesome_spider.jpg
 
Epona said:
I don't think so - purely based on my experience of being out and about with a male friend who was wearing a leopard-print dress in the centre of Sheffield on a busy Friday night - sadly, it very nearly turned nasty. Cultural conditioning is a far stronger impulse in many modern humans - whether that is for good or ill.
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It would be an interesting piece of research though, just to see if we do have any instinctive reactions to colours. I'll see if I can find anything out online. :)
 
farmerbarleymow said:
It would be an interesting piece of research though, just to see if we do have any instinctive reactions to colours. I'll see if I can find anything out online. :)
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There was some research done a couple of decades ago or more about street-lighting which indicated that the yellow lights in common use at the time were unhelpful in dissipating drunken city-centre aggression, and that white or pink-tinted lights were better (if I am remembering this correctly, it was a long time ago) - and there have also been loads of studies into use of colour for decor in 'institutional' settings. So those (along with subsequent debate/challenges) might be good starting points if you are keen to look into it.
 
Epona said:
I know, 'killer spiders' seem to be all the rage in the media recently. No spider bite is pleasant, but neither is it usually any worse than a bee sting at the very worst (and more usually comparable to a mosquito or gnat bite), and there's no UK spider that can cause danger to a healthy adult - the few cases that have been reported are ones with bizarre complications, infection, or allergy related issues. My ex was once bitten on his hand by an especially large teg when he was putting it outside and it was a bit painful and the site got a bit inflamed over the course of a few hours (application of an antihistamine cream helped, as it would with most minor but slightly irritating bites that cause a local reaction), but it was leagues away from being in any way medically significant.
Click to expand...
There was a local news story three years ago about someone in my road who was plagued with false widows and was concerned about their five year old. It was a far less sensational story and just suggested they have a nasty bite but compared it to a wasp sting. The only reason it was thought to be newsworthy was the amount of spiders in their home and garage. Up until that point I'd not really taken any notice of the exact type of spiders I have in my home.

It turns out I share my home with them too! I'm not too worried about the ones in my garage but I am wary of rummaging through the boxes I keep in there - I don't particularly want to find out first hand what the bite feels like. :D I have to admit that when I found one under the kitchen sink I cleared out the cupboard (carefully) and found five of them. I couldn't bring myself to kill them so I took them outside.

I get the feeling that they don't move around too much once they've found somewhere they like as I had to empty a box in the garage last weekend which I'd previously found one so I carefully opened it and there she/he was. Sadly I had to turf it out but I guess it's found comfy home in another box by now. :)
 
I'm pretty sure I have false widows in my house - near where I sleep.
I have to confess to feeling a bit queasy about removing tegenarias from the bath.

The weirdest thing is I have a dark cupboard with hardly any access from the outside with lots of daddylongleg spiders in it so no apparent food souce.
I just Googled and the Pholcidae apparently eat the eggs of other spiders !
 
Thing about spiders is that they are generally very unconfrontational - even if you had some really venomous spider from overseas living in your home, it's not going to leap off the wall and bite you in your sleep, and if you went near it, it would run away. As I may have mentioned earlier in this thread I once brought a brown recluse home in my luggage from North Carolina - it didn't leap out in the middle of the night and bite me like a bad plot from an awful b movie, it ran off and hid (and subsequently died). The vast majority of spider bites (which are hardly a daily occurrence here anyway) occur either because a: you have picked a spider up and handled it, or b: it was in your laundry and was trapped in an item of clothing when you put it on and you got bitten by a spider trapped and in fear for its life. Both situations are fairly easily avoided.
 
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Fez909 said:
pfp7h8G.jpg
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That's an amazing spider! It does seem to be very rare for them to be so brightly coloured (understandable given predation by birds and things) so this is lovely to see. An impressive mating display too - and they picked great music to go with it. :cool:
 
Found this nice picture of a spider on the BBC site, from a selection of pictures of Autumn in Wales:

_70406447_spider_mr_gnu.jpg


More pictures here - not spiders though, as this is the only one in the selection.
 
I only thought yesterday as I was looking at the orb weavers in my front garden - do they have variable patterns on their bodies ?
 
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