# Oh Please You're Fucking Kidding Me (Spiders & Me) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 4, 2009, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998 "2009-04-04T21:33:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2009, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/81 "2009-04-08T22:00:58Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Brothers and sisters, we must band in solidarity to resist the media’s attempt to foist its brand of arachno-syndicalism on the people’s revolutionary movement… **elucidator** , I want you to go to your room and think about what you’ve done. We’re going to have to talk later on about what your punishment is going to be. ---
**Author:** ![lynne-42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lynne-42/32/3138_2.png) [@lynne-42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynne-42)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2009, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/82 "2009-04-09T09:48:47Z")
> [@Lute Skywatcher](#): > > Or at least change “I emphatically state THERE ARE NO BROWN RECLUSE SPIDERS LIVING IN CALIFORNIA.” to “There are a few brown recluse spiders living in California BUT NOWHERE NEAR AS MANY AS PEOPLE CLAIM.” > > See post #75. As Vetter says - the very occasional Brown Recluse is brought into California. But one alone cannot establish a viable population - that’s the way I read “living” which is getting a bit pedantic for my non-pedantic tendencies. It is the way I understood it in the email exchange I had with him on the topic. I am sure that Rick would agree a brown recluse bite is possible in California, on the rare occasion one is transported in. But that they are not commonly found, yet they are very commonly reported. He says there are records of eight, which I take to be since records began - whenever - meaning way less than one a year, maybe less than one a decade. Chances of being bitten - do the sums and you will get effectively zero, but not absolutely zero. Happy to be corrected by higher authorities - I’m way better on Australian spiders! ---
**Author:** ![arachnologus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dc4da7/32.png) [@arachnologus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/arachnologus)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2009, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/83 "2009-04-09T10:18:21Z")
> [@Lute Skywatcher](#): > > Or at least change “I emphatically state THERE ARE NO BROWN RECLUSE SPIDERS LIVING IN CALIFORNIA.” to “There are a few brown recluse spiders living in California BUT NOWHERE NEAR AS MANY AS PEOPLE CLAIM.” OK, if you want to split hairs I’ll be glad to join you in the exercise. The handful of brown recluse specimens that have been intercepted in California in the past (one at a time, mostly in the containers they arrived in) are all dead now. And they didn’t bite anyone while they were alive. Not one of these specimens had a chance to reproduce. And the climate wouldn’t have been suitable in any case. So to the best of our knowledge, there are no brown recluses living today in California. Get it? Of course, some day another one will arrive in someone’s trailer or whatever. But at a rate of 8 in 50 years, it’s pretty unlikely there’s a single one there now! People always say “but they get carried everywhere and that’s how all these bites occur.” Nonsense! The chances of a bite are so minimal that you have to be living in the midst of thousands of them (as people in Kansas, Missouri, etc. do) to have any chance at all of being bitten. We can be quite confident that no one has ever been bitten by a brown recluse in California. Or in my own state of Washington, where exactly 2 have ever been intercepted. Yet probably more than 100 bites per year are diagnosed in these states. Malpractice, anyone? > [@](#): > > Originally posted by Aruvqan > Sorry, but when you take the spider with you to the ER and it is positively ID’d as a brown recluse, and it does have the ‘volcano’ bite with the flesh starting to digest, Rick Vetter can go pound sand. You’re not paying attention. Revisit my post above where I explained that spider IDs by medical personnel are worthless. Naturally, someone who has only ever heard of 2 out of the 40,000 plus spider species is going to say that your spider is one of those 2. They don’t even get an hour on spider ID in medical school - and really learning it takes years! ---
**Author:** ![lynne-42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lynne-42/32/3138_2.png) [@lynne-42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynne-42)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2009, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/84 "2009-04-09T13:24:39Z")
> [@arachnologus](#): > > They don’t even get an hour on spider ID in medical school - and really learning it takes years! I’ve spent years on it - but not what **arachnologus** means by “really learning” which takes a hell of a lot of dead spiders and a microscope. With the help of arachnologists, I can identify the most common spiders here, but only if they are distinctive. I am really pleased if I can get the rest to the right family. I have hundreds of the two very common Australian house spiders, the black house spider (_Badumna insignis_) and the smaller one which has no universal common name, but we have exported to California (_Badumna longinqua_). I have been watching them for years and can usually tell them apart. But get a small, patterned _B. insignis_, or a large, dark _B. longinqua_ and you have a problem. A few months ago something really strange happened with mating. As the behaviour of most of our spiders isn’t documented, this was a really new observation, so of importance. Not relevant here what. I sent high resolution close-up photos of the three spiders involved to one of the very few Australian arachnid taxonomists, Dr Mark Harvey, who said he couldn’t be sure what species they were without dead bodies under the microscope, and a good look at their genitalia. I was too besotted by my resident female to even consider killing her. As I am sure **arachnologus** will be able to verify, this guy is world class. If he can’t be sure of the species just by looking, then I am astounded if others can. I will never make a firm call on a spider other than those I have had my identification confirmed by experts, so I know that there isn’t another very similar species. Mostly I write things like _Badumna sp._, to be safe! And I spend hours every day watching spiders. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2009, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/85 "2009-04-09T13:31:43Z")
> [@lynne-42](#): > > Dr Mark Harvey, who said he couldn’t be sure what species they were without dead bodies under the microscope, and a good look at their genitalia. I was too besotted by my resident female to even consider killing her. Get her to lay back and spread them … spider porn? \ What if you had some sort of glass platform over the camera so she could stand there and you could get pictures of the underside? Then you wouldht have to wait until she dies to send her porn shots off =) ---
**Author:** ![lynne-42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lynne-42/32/3138_2.png) [@lynne-42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynne-42)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2009, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/86 "2009-04-09T13:48:14Z")
Like your thinking. Pity she’s a funnel-weaver, with her funnel going well down into the back of the kitchen bench. Go too close, and she’s gone. But the theory is good - well, in theory. I don’t know if that would give enough detail, because I am not a taxonomist. \*\*arachnologus \*\*- could that work if I could get her onto glass? This is hypothetical, only, mind you. Spiders are actually very delicate and you can easily hurt them. Fenestra (as I named her in strangled French for the window behind her web) has mated now, and there is no way I risk her breeding! Lots of little Fenestras. I dream on! As for waiting until they die. A dead spider will soon disappear “in the wild” as mine are. The ants remove leftovers very fast! That’s what’s so fantastic about getting to know individual spiders around your home, you get to see the whole world in which they live - and usually die. I blog my spiders on a site I call Spiderbloggers. Others blog their spiders there as well. I started with 26 _Badumna sp._ on the door frames at the beginning of summer and none made it to breeding. One died molting, one was eaten by another spider (a white-tailed) and the other 24 went to the birds who think my spiders are merely their smorgasbord. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2009, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/87 "2009-04-09T14:56:22Z")
> [@lynne-42](#): > > As Vetter says - the very occasional Brown Recluse is brought into California. But one alone cannot establish a viable population - that’s the way I read “living” which is getting a bit pedantic for my non-pedantic tendencies. It is the way I understood it in the email exchange I had with him on the topic. I am sure that Rick would agree a brown recluse bite is possible in California, on the rare occasion one is transported in. But that they are not commonly found, yet they are very commonly reported. He says there are records of eight, which I take to be since records began - whenever - meaning way less than one a year, maybe less than one a decade. Chances of being bitten - do the sums and you will get effectively zero, but not absolutely zero. Happy to be corrected by higher authorities - I’m way better on Australian spiders! > [@arachnologus](#): > > OK, if you want to split hairs I’ll be glad to join you in the exercise. The handful of brown recluse specimens that have been intercepted in California in the past (one at a time, mostly in the containers they arrived in) are all dead now. And they didn’t bite anyone while they were alive. Not one of these specimens had a chance to reproduce. And the climate wouldn’t have been suitable in any case. So to the best of our knowledge, there are no brown recluses living today in California. Get it? > > Of course, some day another one will arrive in someone’s trailer or whatever. But at a rate of 8 in 50 years, it’s pretty unlikely there’s a single one there now! > > People always say “but they get carried everywhere and that’s how all these bites occur.” Nonsense! The chances of a bite are so minimal that you have to be living in the midst of thousands of them (as people in Kansas, Missouri, etc. do) to have any chance at all of being bitten. We can be quite confident that no one has ever been bitten by a brown recluse in California. “It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.” - Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe ---
**Author:** ![incidental](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/22d042/32.png) [@incidental](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/incidental)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2009, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/88 "2009-04-09T21:58:33Z")
> [@Labrador\_Deceiver](#): > > From what I can tell, they were probably misdiagnosed. [Evidently](http://spiders.ucr.edu/necrotic.html), people are misdiagnosed quite often. From the link: " For example, a family of 4 in Lenexa, Kansas collected 2,055 brown recluse spiders in their house in 6 months. About 450 of these were large enough to cause envenomations, they saw brown recluses crawling all over the house, the walls, the carpet, in the sinks and bathtub, yet in 8 years of occupancy of that house (as of Sept 2004), no person or their multitude of pets has ever shown evidence of a bite" I’m sorry, but in the name of all that is good and holy, what the FUCK is wrong with these people? 2,055 brown recluses!? in six months?! Okay, okay…no one’s been bitten…but holy, moly - 2,055 of any kind of bug would send me screaming to the hills, much less 2,055 potentially deadly bugs crawling all over my home. ---
**Author:** ![arachnologus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dc4da7/32.png) [@arachnologus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/arachnologus)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2009, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/89 "2009-04-10T07:29:38Z")
> [@lynne-42](#): > > But the theory is good - well, in theory. I don’t know if that would give enough detail, because I am not a taxonomist. \*\*arachnologus \*\*- could that work if I could get her onto glass? Glass, being rigid, is not the ideal material but it could work. When I want to examine the genitalia of a live spider (note: first catch your spider!) I use a heavy-gauge ziploc bag. Once the spider is inside, you can squeeze just enough air out so that the spider is restrained from flipping over, without being squashed. Then you can put your upside-down but still living spider under the microscope and examine the epigynum (if a female) or the palps (if a male). Ziplocs come in so many sizes you can have one small enough for a white-tail and one large enough for a huntsman. After all, spiders practice sexual bondage themselves, so you might say this is not even that unusual an experience for them ;). If you’re into what other posters here might call “spider porn” check out this page of epigynum photos taken by my friend Nina: [http://picasaweb.google.com/nina.sandlin/LinEpig#](http://picasaweb.google.com/nina.sandlin/LinEpig#) These “dwarf spiders” average about 2 millimeters long and many look almost exactly alike - yet look how different the sex organs are! No wonder we depend heavily on them for spider ID! ---
**Author:** ![lynne-42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lynne-42/32/3138_2.png) [@lynne-42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynne-42)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2009, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/90 "2009-04-10T09:44:23Z")
Thank you. Fenestra can stay exactly where she is in her web. That all sounds way too hard for me. Catching spiders is very difficult unless they are on a nice flat surface, like a floor or wall, and are likely to stand still long enough to put a glass over them. Most of my spiders are adept at disappearing if you don’t sneak up on them. They are very good at detecting movement. That’s why most people don’t realize that they are constantly in the company of a large number of them, unless they have the misfortune to be in modern sterile surroundings. I can’t imagine any way of getting close enough to Fenertra to catch her. The same would be true of the wolf spiders - we are lucky enough to have large burrowing ones, so they stay put - I can get close by sneaking, but they would be back in their burrows long before I could catch one, or block the burrow. They move like lightning! Always away from me back into the burrow. Never towards. Never attacking. I’ll leave the taxonomy to experts and keep on doing my behavioural studies. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2009, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/91 "2009-04-10T15:10:08Z")
What kind of spider causes the same necrotized flesh wound that continues to grow and get deeper? My mom was bitten and they had to take a core of flesh out of her leg to stop it. I’ve been bitten too. Didn’t get as bad though I really kept my eye on it. ---
**Author:** ![lynne-42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lynne-42/32/3138_2.png) [@lynne-42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynne-42)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2009, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/92 "2009-04-10T15:20:32Z")
Did you actually see the spider? ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2009, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/93 "2009-04-10T16:05:18Z")
> [@lynne-42](#): > > Did you actually see the spider? No. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2009, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/94 "2009-04-10T16:08:17Z")
> [@arachnologus](#): > > If you’re into what other posters here might call “spider porn” check out this page of epigynum photos taken by my friend Nina: > [http://picasaweb.google.com/nina.sandlin/LinEpig#](http://picasaweb.google.com/nina.sandlin/LinEpig#) > These “dwarf spiders” average about 2 millimeters long and many look almost exactly alike - yet look how different the sex organs are! No wonder we depend heavily on them for spider ID! That’s a fantastic photo album. If I may suggest it, that needs to be in the form of a searchable database. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2009, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/95 "2009-04-10T17:18:13Z")
Well, maybe. Or maybe some pervo just likes any excuse to peer at arachnoid naughty bits. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2009, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/96 "2009-04-10T19:24:42Z")
Ahha! I think maybe it was a Hobo spider in my case. [This](http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%3Fei%3DUTF-8%26p%3Dhobo%2Bspider&w=321&h=480&imgurl=jackspestcontrol.hypermart.net%2Fimages%2Fhobo_spider.jpg&size=28.8kB&name=hobo_spider.jpg&rcurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjackspestcontrol.hypermart.net%2Fhobo_spider.htm&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjackspestcontrol.hypermart.net%2Fhobo_spider.htm&p=hobo+spider&type=jpeg&no=3&tt=543&oid=f0b03bd0fa65d19a&tit=hobo_spider.jpg&sigr=11lclt8bc&sigi=11lh6u401&sigb=11lpvbp5o#FCar=4ee8abed0e0a3b2a) a picture of a Hobo Spider bite. Very much like what I had. On the ankle too. (the pic isn’t too gross). It appears that they are found in Colorado as well. ---
**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/97 "2009-04-10T20:24:18Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > I think maybe it was a Hobo spider in my case. The backyard wall of the first house I lived in when I moved to central Oregon was \*covered \*with Hobo spider webs. I was terrified of going into the back yard for that reason- but I couldn’t just spray 'em to kill them off, as from what I understand, that’d just drive the little bastards inside the house. ---
**Author:** ![lynne-42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lynne-42/32/3138_2.png) [@lynne-42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynne-42)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2009, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998/98 "2009-04-11T00:40:11Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > No. If you didn’t see the spider, then there are a huge number of potential causes which have no spider involved at all. The quick and easy response is “spider bite”. The infection is probably caused by a bacteria, which entered through any sort of bite or skin break. This has spider bite paranoia happened here with the white-tailed spider, starting from some over-hyped media reports about 30 years ago. Even the medical media picked it up. Although the white-tailed has been cleared of any blame for years now, there are endless people who assure me they have been bitten and reacted as you state. In every case, when I ask if they actually saw the spider, they haven’t. The expert is Geoff Isbister, and here is [the summary of the research](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12914510?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=1&log$=relatedarticles&logdbfrom=pubmed): A severely ulcerated bite should not be assumed to be spider. Poor little darlings. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-please-youre-fucking-kidding-me-spiders-me/491998.md?page=4)