Hmm, cave crickets and spiders…
Behold! The African Cave Spider*
Any one remember this classic Fear Factor?
:eek:
ETA: Finally found it, lunch timefor him.
*technically the tailless whip scorpion
Some damn Aussie reporting in. My bias up front: I am a recovered arachnophobe who studied spiders to over come the fear when it got out of hand, and I am now obsessed by spiders. Totally and utterly adore them!
We don’t have bigger spiders - your tarantulas are bigger than anything we have. Widow spiders (our equivalent is the redback) are incredibly docile and are hard to get to bite. Haven’t killed anyone in about 50 years - since the anti-venom came in. They are very common in our backyard, as they are all over the world, and I’ve never heard of anyone I know being bitten - just the usual anonymous super-hyped anecdotes.
Brown recluse paranoia is rampant in this thread, so let’s fight some ignorance - could you please read your own expert on brown recluse bites, Rick Vetter: Brown Recluse Myths. To quote: “I emphatically state THERE ARE NO BROWN RECLUSE SPIDERS LIVING IN CALIFORNIA.” He also goes on about just how reclusive and docile they are. And the massive misdiagnosis issue alluded to above.
Oh, and the one “eating” the bird is a Nephila (golden orb weaver). They are also all over the world, including America. They make incredibly strong webs which very occasionally catch very small birds (as this one is). The spider would have been trying to get it out of the web. Stunning spiders! And so docile you can handle them without any risk of being hurt. Not so kind to the spider, though.
I had to overcome my arachnophobia because I live in the bush and we have hundreds of spiders around the house all the time. Lots nore in the surrounding bush. I bought $3,000 worth of camera equipment just so I could photograph then up close in full magnification. Guess that proves I overcame my arachnophobia. It is MUCH better being this way than screaming irrationally about some poor harmless creature a thousandth your size who will not do you the slightest harm.
You see, this is why I live in Sweden.
What the FUCK! - That’s the worst image in this thread by far (and a good reminder of why I stopped visiting rotten.com a long time ago). Spiders are just kind of meh to me. Then again, I live in Denmark and we have no dangerous wildlife at all, so I’ve never learned to properly fear our arachnid friends.
Please, people, don’t ever expect a doctor or a hospital to give you a correct spider identification! Medical personnel get zero training in this science, which actually requires years of experience to do corrrectly. The day I suddenly acquire the ability to perform brain surgery, I’ll believe a doctor’s spider ID! If you actually have a spider that bit someone, always take the extra trouble to find a real spider specialist to identify it - if you want to know what it really is.
Most people believe you can recognize a brown recluse by whole-body appearance. You can’t! Thousands of spider species look like that. Nearly every spider species on earth has some body part that’s vaguely shaped like a violin. When you’re really identifying a spider, the first thing you look at is the arrangement of the eyes. See my diagram of brown recluse eyes here. And if you’re too phobic to get that close to a spider, then you’ll just have to accept that you’ll probably never identify a spider correctly.
The number of brown recluses in California is zero. Exactly one specimen has EVER been found in Cook County, Illinois (where Chicago is). The only place mentioned in this thread where the brown recluse really does occur is Cincinnati. But misdiagnoses and misidentifications are just as common there as anywhere else.
Now, the prevalence of black widows in Stoid’s yard and garden - THAT I believe. Southern California is the number one place on the planet to find black widows - but genuine human bites are surprisingly rare there. False widows do occur in California too, at least in the coastal areas.
Ha! Both, I guess.
Brown recluses aren’t really native to any part of NC save a small part of the Western end of the state. Finding two in two days wouldn’t be rare at all if they were there. According to the articles linked in this thread, you’d be able to find 20 or so without trying too hard.
Originally posted by tds1273
I’m not sure you know exactly how much I hate you right now.
But seriously, I’m a recovering arachnaphobe, and still working on some of the more evil little bastards. But this stuff points up, along with that damn golden orb weaver with the bird, still give me the heebie jeebies. Damn it.
*btw, is that thing poisonous? Just curious. I’ll look it up in a minute when my skin quits crawling.
Ah. I sit corrected. However, both of those spiders broke the Rule of Being Around Ryl: If you are large and not a daddy longlegs, you live outside or risk being smashed to death. Several wolf spiders have learned this lesson to their flatness.
Once you get over the “Holy SHIT! No FUCK-ing WAY!”- ness of it all, you actually realize how deeply sad it is. He was some woman’s little boy once.
If you’re like me (the curious sort who should know better), it’s a picture of guy with a huge hole in his leg and a whole lot of maggots. Now you don’t have to click. Seriously, don’t.
I’m going to go away and look at kitten pictures for a while now.
First of all, we have a world class zoo here in Cincinnati so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that the good doc sent it to an actual practicing arachnologist to i.d.
Secondly, the actual nomenclature of the offending bugger is secondary to the fact that the bite did, indeed, cause serious complications. The doctor could have called it a purple extrovert spider and it wouldn’t have made a difference in the treatment.
That being said, I’m certainly not advcating squashing every spider we see. That’s just silly. But it is interesting to note that I, personally, know three people who had serious complications following a spider-of-some-sort bite. On the other hand, I know zero people who were bitten by a poisonous snake or a shark, which are other perhaps more irrational phobias.
Lacking any basis for comparison, this immediately brings to mind “cave troll”. Unsettling indeed, but *that * thought led to a Monty Python skit…
The Fellowship is backed into that little room, the door is barred, they’re preparing for battle, Boromir turns and says (in sarcastic relief) “They have a cave cricket.”
We might also interpret the advice from our Australian friends (the Texas of the Pacific) as suggestive that perhaps a strict regimen of beer affords some protection. We might do well to consider this excellent advice from expert sources.
I propose that we send them our next five years production of Coors as a reward for selfless service!
How can he be so sure? Has he gone spider hunting all over the state?
You’re just as much in their living place as they are in yours. 99% of spiders you encounter in your house in the U.S. are harmless little things. A fly is much more of a danger to you than a spider. They can carry bacteria.
I use to like spiders, then loathed them; I’m not sure exactly what changed, but I don’t mind them too bad again. As long as they don’t unexpectedly crawl on me that is- that’s a paddlin’
I actually use to have a spider in my room, I think it was a hobo-spider, they are hunting spiders. So every night around eleven or so, I would watch him crawl along the ceiling, down behind the tv, up another wall, back down to the ground again, etc… He would always take the same routes. I only have room for one spider at a time, but they’re good for keeping any other pests out. I liked to think of him as a little living Roomba.
Another fun little spider game I used to play as a kid, is making an all natural yo-yo with those orange garden spiders(at least the ones in the northwest). Get one on a sturdy leaf or a stick and then give it a little shake, they’ll drop down with their line and then crawl back up. Give it another shake and they’ll do the same thing. Then just put them back where you found them. It was a nice little time killer while waiting for the bus.
I am so glad that I live well out of Black Widow and Brown Recluse territory. God love a New England winter!
Pink hearts, yellow moons, brown spiders, and blue diamonds. Wait, what? Ahhh! Get them off, get them off!!!
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.
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.