What Spider is this??

reply to post by Teye22


I think the color is just because it is taken in the red sunset. Could be wrong but looks that way to me. it is missing the white dot but male and females look different.

Clearly a Creepycrawlyamis Maximus if I ever saw one. Absolutely venomous and able to jump at least 100 feet in any given direction. A true man killer. Be careful my friend!

That is the easiest identification I have done in a while. That spider looks just like a dead spider.

reply to post by rickymouse


Actually,.....it was well alive when that picture was taken. It was killed later that same day.

reply to post by Teye22


I would say it is definitely the Garden Spider.

Ours are a bit bigger here in Oz:

reply to post by Teye22


I know, I had read your whole post and knew that your wife had killed it. At the time I posted it was dead though

We got some little spiders here that change color to match their surroundings. They are common garden spiders but it's neat to watch them change colors completely in about five minutes. My granddaughter and I were hauling one around to different flowers to see what colors it would change to. Nature is so impressive.

I killed a big wolf spider one day. It's body was about two inches long and three quarters of an inch wide. It was the size of a huge peanut. I don't usually like killing spiders because they eat a lot of bugs but this one if seen by my wife would have been disastrous. She would have had me spray everything around the house killing everything if she saw it. I guess it was a big female according to the research I did. I hate killing things for no reason but in this case it saved the lives of many more spiders and other insects. I like bugs that eat other bugs.

Many years ago I was spraying around the house to kill mosquitoes. They got worse because all the wasps and other preditor insects left. The birds didn't come around either because it killed the earthworms that attracted the robins. For many years I had to buy worms for fishing, I can once again go out and pick all I need within five to ten minutes. I will never spray anything again. There are hardly any mosquitoes around anymore also, the dragon flies are around now and they are gobbling them up. Nature doesn't need us to control the populations of bugs. If it is working properly it can keep things running smoothly. Wasps like to eat the bugs in the garden but don't like the taste of them when they are poisoned. I have learned to work with nature now, a great feeling. I work on the garden right alongside of the wasps and bees. I like the harvester spiders the best of all the spiders. I guess they are technically not a spider though. I think the person who classified them as not a spider needed glasses so he could see things better.

I saw a pine spider bigger than a tarantella here in the UP. I pushed it off a wall we built at a camp on the dead river and it died as it hit the floor. When I went up the step ladder and saw it at eye level it scared me. Of course my worker didn't believe me and went up and almost fell off the ladder when he saw it. We moved the ladder away from the wall and gave it a shove and it jumped off the wall. We put it in a bottle and the owner took it to the local university where it was identified. I guess these huge pine spiders are common in the woods. It's body was a little oblong and about three inches wide and four inches long and an inch thick. It had short thick legs on top of that. It only weighed at most a few ounces, impressively light for it's size. You wouldn't see it on a pine tree because it looked like a chunk of pine bark with legs, it would just look like a bump. I've looked for them for many years in the woods now and have not as of yet seen one on a tree because of their ability to blend in so well. I know they are out there though. I wonder how big they can get?

reply to post by rickymouse


That was one big pine spider you had there. Would have scared me too if I saw that one right in my face

I remember a few years back I had cought a normal house spider (black) in my basement that had a body of about a half inch wide and 3/4 inch long (pretty big for inside the house IMO) and I put it into a glass jar to observe it. I had also caught a carpenter ant and put it in there to see if the spider would eat the ant.

To my amazement, the ant got extremely agressive and tried to attack the spider......the spider started litteraly running laps around the jar to avoid the ant. I found this hillarious as the spider was probably 10X the ant's size.

My kids thought it was funny as hell also and you guessed it my wife gave me hell and had me release them outside. She has an issue with bugs I guess!!!!!! lollll

reply to post by OzTiger


that is a huntsman spider, they are so cewl ..... but aren't all spiders so very cewl???? I just love the critters

just a bit of a rant on this thread....

I just love spiders, and it saddens me so much when I see how many posters just kill them all.... Just do yourself a favour and study the amount of carcasses of insects they have eaten around their nests. You will be surprised by how many insects they eat. Back when I lived in Africa, I would count the amount of insect-carcasses around the liars of spiders that lived in my house, and it was a case of 50-100 mosquitoes every night... Although all true spiders are venomous, they would leave you alone, if you leave them alone. When I arrived in Norway, I was so relieved to find that many people believed it was bad luck to kill a spider.

Learn about the spiders in your area, see which ones you should avoid. Don't kill spiders, if you are uncomfortable with them in your home, catch them and put them outside. If you are too scared of that, ask somebody else to do it for you, but please don't kill them. They serve a very important role in their ecological niche.

reply to post by Hellhound604


I agree with you entirely. I rarely kill any bug at all as i beleive that all animals and insects have their important role to play in this world even the creepy ones (except moskitoes.....those I kill all the time but only when they sting me....).

I do release spiders outdoors when I catch one inside...this one freaked out the wife and She thought it could be dangerous so she got rid of it......If I would have been home at that time I would have relocated it outside our yard but would not have killed it.

At least she kept the body so that I could have a look at it when I got home. My kids found the spider on the side of the pool and showed it to mommy!!!!!! She freaked out so much that she had them go back inside the house

Ah well...Now that we know what it is, she will tolerate them more.....I hope. But I did ask her not to kill them if she sees them and not to keep the kids from playing outside just because there was a weird bug....And I explained to my kids to leave them alone as well.

There are so many bugs around that we have not seen before. I guess with climate change, they relocate to more suitable environments.

Originally posted by OzTiger
reply to post by Teye22

 

I would say it is definitely the Garden Spider.

Ours are a bit bigger here in Oz:

love that one!!!!!!

reply to post by Teye22


We have two outside cats. The male cat was glued to the head of a four point buck once after attacking it for getting to close. The deer shook it off twice before leaving. This happened with my wife, daughter, and I standing ten feet away. Good thing that buck was friendly. When the two cats were together they would chase away any dog or fox, even dobermans and German Shephards. Their confidence intimidated most animals. The mother bear and two cubs scared the hell out of these cats though, they felt like wet noodles when we found them after chasing the bears out of the yard. They eat rabbits, partridge, mice, squirrels, and lots of catfood. They had a pet white footed mouse living with them in the garage though, it ate their catfood. I suppose it was survival rations for them if something was to happen...Prepping for a SHTF scenario.

I suppose I should get to the point finally. Both these cats together were afraid of a little squirrel that was shaking his fists while chirping at the cats. The cats were so stupified by the courage or amazed at the squirrels confidence that they didn't know what to do. They watched from three feet away and backed off and left. It looked as if the squirrel was saying "try to get me you assholes, I'll tear you to shreds" while air punching like a boxer practicing....... Confidence is everything, and should be respected, but stupidity along with confidence is crazy. That male cat could have taken that squirrel out in a second if he wanted to, if he was hungry or pissed at his old lady that squirrel's confidence would have meant nothing.

Originally posted by Teye22
reply to post by rickymouse

 

That was one big pine spider you had there. Would have scared me too if I saw that one right in my face

I remember a few years back I had cought a normal house spider (black) in my basement that had a body of about a half inch wide and 3/4 inch long (pretty big for inside the house IMO) and I put it into a glass jar to observe it. I had also caught a carpenter ant and put it in there to see if the spider would eat the ant.

To my amazement, the ant got extremely agressive and tried to attack the spider......the spider started litteraly running laps around the jar to avoid the ant. I found this hillarious as the spider was probably 10X the ant's size.

My kids thought it was funny as hell also and you guessed it my wife gave me hell and had me release them outside.

She has an issue with bugs I guess!!!!!! lollll

Fun playing God isn't it? I wonder if some little gray aliens are laughing at some guy right now running circles with a big poisonous spider behind him! to them it would be like wow he is scared of that little thing!

If by any chance it is an unknown species it would be wise to capture it without injuring it so the proper study of the species could be done.. If it turned out to be a known species you could simply release it.... Just think, if it is an unknown species , you should be the one to name it...

reply to post by Teye22




Is anybody else, going to eat that?

I have a love hate relation with Spiders. I think they cool and trapped and kept a few in a terrarium as a kid. But I despise them on the wall above the headboard

Originally posted by rickymouse

It's body was a little oblong and about three inches wide and four inches long and an inch thick. It had short thick legs on top of that.

i'm pretty sure i would have had a heart attack if i saw that in person. spiders scare the crap out of me but if i see one i try to get it outside and not kill it. Gotta let it get those mosquitos

reply to post by Soulreaper54


It was scary looking but the person from the college said it was harmless. I suppose getting a heart attack was not included in his interpretation of harmless.

I hope it's not the famous and much feared "as seen on tv"....african barking spider.....

It was mentionned to me by an entomologist from the Insectorium of Montreal that it could be a Dolomedes tenebrosus..."fishing spider" It does have similarities with what I have seen at my home. So did the Garden Spider mentionned here earlier. ...I just re-sent him the picture...because he didn't receive it for some reason. So he gave me this information just from the description I gave him....Waiting for the confirmation now.

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I will post the confirmation as soon as I receive it.