GEEKS!!!!!!!!!!

I can't see it here at work. I'll look when I get home but chances are I'd be getting the AquaNet out with a nice Bic.

ok...I just caught another spider in my house. It is not the same so let's play the guessing game again. This one is alive still so Mandy if you want him/her, you can have him/her.

It is small and has arrow head markings on its back. I'm attaching a pic. Have fun!!!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v251/lisserwisser/spider001.jpg

test

I can't see any posts!!!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v251/lisserwisser/spider001.jpg

This is my most recent victim. He is still alive. If you want him Mandy, he's yours!!! He's got cool arrow head markings on his back. They start off larger then get smaller.

Ahh, you have the common House spider. I raised one from a spiderling to an adult and allowed her to mate to produce more just to study them last summer, they are very interesting, what got me started is that they remind you VERY much of the Black Widow in the fact their webs are very similar, and they are in the same family, but are not as harmful to humans as the Black Widow is.

http://www.uark.edu/depts/entomolo/museum/steatoda.html

what really impressed me is the way they attack their prey, the have little webs that hang down to the ground and when an ant or something bumps it BAM.. they drop down so fast you barely see it and then wrap them up and bring them up to their safe zone. Like I said, I LOVE Spiders and am facinated by them.. and in the area I live I get to see all sorts of them.

"it has never been found in Arkansas and it is apparently rare south of Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska (Levi 1957)."

hey. maybe you should take it for a ride and introduce it to the south.. lol

damn! i though i had something neat!! he is neat 2 watch though! thanks mike!!!

Barry © wrote:

This is wild country he's entering, where some trees can walk

Hmmm, and the booze flows free, I shouldn't wonder.

dragonzflame wrote:

I like spiders. Mind you, we only get daddy long legs in our house and they're good because they eat the flies.
Rats, however, now those are things I don't want in the house.

You wouldn't want to come to my house then, we've got two pet rats, one of whom is bigger than most guinea pigs!

Barry © wrote:

It looks like we may have a new contender for the world's biggest spider, a newly discovered Tarantula nick-named The Chicken Eating Spider;

By day Martin Nicholas is an ordinary guy. But by night he becomes the Spider Man, a nickname he's earned because of the hundreds of spiders which share his tiny flat in Bracknell. Martin has circled the world seeking out the most enigmatic individuals of the 35,000 spiders known to exist...the tarantulas

Now he is in Peru searching for a contender for the title of Biggest Spider in the World, currently held by the 11 inch Venezuelan Goliath Birdeater. Martin's quarry is an un-catalogued species. It is called the Chicken Eating spider because eye witnesses claim to have seen it dragging chickens into its burrow on the edge of jungle clearings. Estimates put it at around 10 inches from one hairy foot to another. This is wild country he's entering, where some trees can walk and where the Wandering Spider lives, whose venom is 18 times more deadly than America's Black Widow.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/images/spiderman3.jpg

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/images/spiderman2.jpg

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/deepjungle/episode2_nicholas.html

Now I would love to have one of those as a pet. wow..

I saw this man on a TV special and what amazed me is he allowed a Goliath Bird Eater (T. Blondi) to just walk on his hand, a move that not even most professional Spider collectors would do, and this guy did it with no fear. In that special he found a species of Spider that lived in Caves and are blind.

Lisser wrote:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v251/lisserwisser/spider001.jpg

This is my most recent victim. He is still alive. If you want him Mandy, he's yours!!! He's got cool arrow head markings on his back. They start off larger then get smaller.

House spider. Common, unagressive, and found by the millions. And upon actually reading the topic, I see that Mike has already pointed this out to you - you seem to know your spiders, my friend.

Mike Preston wrote:

Lisser wrote:

I didn't know a thing about brown recluse spiders until recently and certainly not that they lived near me!!! My luck, I'll step on a nest of them. So I guess brown recluse are social and stay in packs sort of? I keep hearing about nests of them. Do the nests consist of a mother and her offspring or is it like a colony type setting?

I once saw a documentary about a spider, I think it was something native to Austraila or New Zealand? There is an island also that is literally covered in them. I hear these spiders are possibly the most aggressive and dangerous? I can't remember the name. A little help here Mandykins!!!! Or Mikey poo poo!! I hate spiders but I feel like the more I know about them, the better off I am even though I've had HORRIBLE spider dreams since Saturday night!!!

Thanks!

Brown Recluses have been known to live in close proximity to each other, and it is not rare to see 3 or more together, that would make a nest. and yes Mel, they live near you as well.. But you should not live in fear, rather just be aware of their existance, taking percautions such as shoes, gloves when handling brush, working in the garden.. stuff like that, and do some research on them, you will find all kinds of helpful information.

Brown recs are pretty common in the southern and midwestern US, I've grown up with them - there was a nest living in the mailbox of my old house, the box had to be sanitized. The best precautions against them are to know what their webs look like - correct me if I'm wrong here, Mike, but I believe they're either orb-weavers or silk-weavers - and wear sensible clothing. If you do happen to get bitten anyway, get it looked at the moment you notice something, especially if it burns continually and starts to swell.

I've never actually seen a brown rec., but I've seen plenty of black widows. Which is more dangerous?

Erin wrote:

I've never actually seen a brown rec., but I've seen plenty of black widows. Which is more dangerous?

Black widows. Their bites are harder to spot.

geeksandgeeks wrote:

Mike Preston wrote:

Lisser wrote:

I didn't know a thing about brown recluse spiders until recently and certainly not that they lived near me!!! My luck, I'll step on a nest of them. So I guess brown recluse are social and stay in packs sort of? I keep hearing about nests of them. Do the nests consist of a mother and her offspring or is it like a colony type setting?

I once saw a documentary about a spider, I think it was something native to Austraila or New Zealand? There is an island also that is literally covered in them. I hear these spiders are possibly the most aggressive and dangerous? I can't remember the name. A little help here Mandykins!!!! Or Mikey poo poo!! I hate spiders but I feel like the more I know about them, the better off I am even though I've had HORRIBLE spider dreams since Saturday night!!!

Thanks!

Brown Recluses have been known to live in close proximity to each other, and it is not rare to see 3 or more together, that would make a nest. and yes Mel, they live near you as well.. But you should not live in fear, rather just be aware of their existance, taking percautions such as shoes, gloves when handling brush, working in the garden.. stuff like that, and do some research on them, you will find all kinds of helpful information.

Brown recs are pretty common in the southern and midwestern US, I've grown up with them - there was a nest living in the mailbox of my old house, the box had to be sanitized. The best precautions against them are to know what their webs look like - correct me if I'm wrong here, Mike, but I believe they're either orb-weavers or silk-weavers - and wear sensible clothing. If you do happen to get bitten anyway, get it looked at the moment you notice something, especially if it burns continually and starts to swell.

Actually they don't make webs like most spiders, they hunt by wandering... here is a couple sites about them and how to correctly identify them

http://spiders.ucr.edu/recluseid.html

http://www.critterridders.com/spiders.htm

as I mentioned the most sensible thing to do is if you are handling brush or grass or gardening, wear gloves, they will help minimize the liklyhood of bites, of course I am not saying you have to bundle up like its winter time, my mom made that mistake with us kids she was so paranoid about spiders that we were never allowed to wear shorts or go barefoot.. and of course this kind of fear gets passed down to the kids, I was terrified of spiders, yet very facinated by them, by collecting them and observing them in their natural habitats I have lost a lot of the fear, still there are times when I see any spider in a place I am not expecting them and I jump and my heart races, but for the most part, they are harmless to us, even to the kids.