From another thread (emphasis mine):
I’d like to hear more about using the giant house spider in hands-on teaching about arachnids.
Speaking of their docility, one crawled across my foot one day as I brushed my teeth. It waited while I finished brushing my teeth and while I went to get the Penalty Jar so I could relocate it.
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Most house spiders are pretty mellow, in my experience. I found this guy crawling under my desk a few months ago, and had no problem picking him up and photographing him. He’s not a Tegenaria, but being in the PNW I’ve got plenty of those around as well.
On the whole, I don’t see how people can be afraid of them. Spiders is cute! (…Well, some spiders.)
Oooh, I want to play
Yeah, well, most people who aren’t arachnologists can’t tell the difference between the docile spiders, the deadly spiders, and the spiders that won’t kill you bt may make you wish it had.
That looks like a Callobius. Here is one I found in my house in the Pacific NW and a link to a previous thread about it.
A few weeks ago I was getting ready for bed when something on my pillow made me do a double take. It was a huge (one inch across) spider. I thought to myself, “If this were TV, I, as a woman, would be obligated to scream at the top of my lungs and climb onto the nearest table in panic.” Instead I picked up the pillow and shook the spider onto the floor, upon which it scurried away.
I haven’t done this much lately because I don’t get many requests from schools since No Child Left Behind (= all enrichment left behind). But in former days I would have as many as 8 elementary school programs per year - the majority being first and second graders, that being the age group Seattle teachers think appropriate for a “spider unit.” Since I travel by bus, I can’t carry an entire menagerie of live spiders (even if I had such a thing) but it’s always easy to find good ol’ Tegenaria gigantea; females live 2 years and are always around, and males are abundant in the period leading up to Halloween (guess when many teachers do their “spider unit” :)).
Some spiders can’t be held in the hand very easily. Orbweavers tend to drop right off, for instance. But these guys just amble around as if they were quite at home. Before trying this trick, make sure you’re wearing short sleeves. It’s hard to get a spider off cloth for the same reason it’s hard to get a frightened kitten off your sweater – claws! Use both hands, so if the spider starts to crawl up one arm it can be diverted onto the other hand. You can keep on “juggling” for a long time if you wish. No bite will occur unless the spider gets trapped between two parts or under clothing, etc.; after all, the spider has no way to tell it’s not walking on the ground.
This is only a small part of the program, but I always use this spider to demonstrate the silliness of spider bite fears. Teacher permitting, any kids with short sleeves are allowed to come up and try it after I’ve demonstrated. After the 2 or 3 bravest have led the way, usually most of them want to do it. Very often, peer pressure even drags some of the initially fearful into the demonstration.
Once in a while, I’ve had requests for this program from higher grade levels. By the 5th or 6th grade, the majority of the kids have been indoctrinated with spider fears, so the hands-on demo is not as popular.
I apologize for the quality of this photo (which phobics might want to avoid); the only print I have is taped to my office door, and I just snapped a shot of the print. Some local TV stations have archived video of my spider demos, but I couldn’t find one online.
outlierrn: No fair using gloves.
Malleus: “Deadly” spiders are a myth, as explained on my page.
Piffle, the gloves are for her protection. I was on a mountain bike ride and this is a wild tarantula, they mostly only come out of their burrows to get laid, and I didn’t want to spoil date night with my human stink.
That’s a nice pic!
Thanks for the post. I’ve only ever seen (footage of) hands-on demos with tarantulas. I’ve never thought of anyone doing it with smaller spiders. I read that the giant house spider is fast. Do they ever take it into their heads to just scurry away as fast as they can?
I was watching a ‘deadliest creatures’ show on TV once, and an arachnologist was ‘handling’ a black widow by pushing it around on a table with his fingers. He said he’d been bitten a few times. After seeing the black widow bite my dad got once, it’s not something that I would want. (Ulcerated wound on his calf. And yes, he saw the spider – which didn’t live long.) A friend was bitten by an orb weaver. I’m not sure how it got there, but it was under his loose-fitting shirt and bit him on the side. No ill effects; just pain at the initial bite and for a little while afterward. Sounds like in both cases, the spiders were induced to bite after being under clothing. Still, in my casual observation, black widows are more aggressive than the guy on TV said they were.
Interesting you say you did your presentations to first- and second-graders. That’s about the age I liked to play with the hairy little (about 1") spiders in the lawn in San Diego. I’ve never attended a hands-on demonstration.
Except that “the ground” doesn’t run in place screaming like a chicken.
That’s a fascinating picture. Question: are those hairs, or “hairs”? Meaning, what are they made of? Basically the same as the exoskeleton/skin/wrapper (please correct my terminology)? Or are they more like mammal hair? What is their function?
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Personally, I like ‘wrapper’.
Invertebrate “hair” is made of chitin, not keratin, as mammalian hair is, so it’s not technically hair.
Yes, this species once held the record for world’s fastest spider. Probably it still ought to hold the record but taxonomy-challenged Guinness switched over to a so-called “camel spider” which isn’t even a spider. And they do run very fast on a big open space like a floor (though the “record speed” was obtained by touching the spider from behind, which triggers the giant axon escape reflex). But I’ve never known them to do anything but amble when on an irregular surface like hands and arms.
I know of no case where the venom of a genuine black widow caused an “ulcerated wound.” They have a systemic neurotoxin with little local effect. I’d strongly suggest either the spider was misidentified, or the bite was infected; maybe both. I know of a case where someone lost an arm after being bitten by an innocuous spider in very unsanitary surroundings; the bite was infected by the notorious gangrene agent Clostridium perfringens. Of course all the media blamed the spider for the amputation and never published a correction…
Good question! Certainly the hairs do not grow like mammal hair, but form along with the exoskeleton and are unveiled in all their glory at each new molt. But there might be some small differences in composition – the book that would give me that answer is missing from my shelf today. They function largely as sense organs of various types, including touch, vibration (substrate and air) and chemical sensors.
Believe me: My dad could identify a black widow spider! He hated them with a passion. And he saw this one. I’d never heard of ulceration either. Since the spider was identified, I suspect the bite became infected.
This was in Lancaster, CA (Northern L.A. County, Western Mojave Desert). The black widow was one of the most commonly-seen spiders in the area (in my observation). Other spiders were ‘daddy long-legs’ and what I called ‘lawn spiders’, of the type I used to catch and play with when I was little. Of course there were many, many species of spiders there; but not being an arachnologist, I could only break them down into the three types. (Plus the occasional ‘jumping spider’, which are so cute I can’t stand it!)
I gotta say I (almost) completely fail to understand people’s liking for spiders. They creep me out, no way two ways around it.
Maybe it’s the same thing where I will cuddle a boa constrictor and sweet-talk it while other people are running away screaming?
Wish I weren’t terrified of even the most innocent garter snake, but I love spiders.
I’m an ecologist, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I have been as susceptible to “deadly spider” mythology as the most couch-bound nature hater. I sincerely appreciate the Straight Dope on this issue, and the work you’ve put into your page.
So, what’s the deal with the brown recluse, then? Necrotic bites? Dangerous?
Awww, that’s cute! It looks like it has hooves.
See my page here. Yes, there is such a spider, and yes, sometimes their bites develop some local necrosis (rarely serious enough to need more than supportive care). There are two big problems with “general public knowledge” of this spider. Firstly, “everybody knows” you can identify one by a "violin mark."False! Secondly, “everybody knows” that the species lives everywhere in North America. False! Unfortunately, every part of the country where these spiders do not live, can boast a few incompetent physicians who call every mysterious necrotic skin lesion a “brown recluse bite.” I’ve been waiting decades for one of these fools to be sued for malpractice, but if it’s happened I haven’t heard about it.
