The calendar indicates that spring is on it’s way. With the arrival of spring my home is constantly inundated by there large spiders. Yes, I am phobic.Here is a photo of one which came crawling out from behind the pillows on my bed last spring. Perhaps my hysteria would be moderated (yeah, right) if I knew that they are, at least, that they aren’t poisonous.
Gaaaaah! They have spiders that big in Alaska?
Hideous, isn’t it? And they come in larger sizes as well, but the bigger spiders are quickly dispatched before a photo can be taken, with me whimpering in the corner. We also have a squatter bodied spider with shorter legs which almost look like a fringe. They are jet black and when they notice that you are noticing them, they jump at you!
Several people I know, as well as myself, have been bitten by some kind of spider. The bite turns into a large, feverish red lump with an ulcerated center. Mine were on my calf, and putting any weight on that leg caused terrible pain in the leg, a deep, muscular kind of ache accompanied by the overstretched feeling of serious inflammation. My son was bitten three times on the hand and wrist, he was 2 1/2 years old, and in only an hour the bites went from small red bumps to swollen, painful lumps with red streaks almost to his armpit. He was given antibiotics via injection, and we had to treat the bites carefully to prevent a secondary infection.
So, it would be nice to know if this or another is doing the biting. I can control my phobia to an extent. Not all spiders must die, just those I find inside my home, and then only the unfriendly, biter ones.
Well, it’s not a Back Widow.
So, it’s harmless.
Some of your symptoms sound like it may be -
I would be surprised to see them in Alaska. But, my mother was bitten by what the docs told her was a Brown recluse in Colorado. And I think I got hit too. Twice.
Note: Most bites are minor. You may be able to identify it with a magnifying glass. The Brown recluse has only 6 eyes (according to Wiki)
But you say it’s jet black in color? I’d like to know what it is too.
Looks like what is commonly referred to as a black house spider. There are some better pictures at the site below.
Thanks people. The spider in my photo is a dark brown/black, the smaller spider with fringe-y legs is jet black. We have a lot of plants and insects and other living things hitchhike their way into Alaska. I never saw the spider that bit my son and I, but the doctor said it was probably a brown recluse. Then again, we are frequently told that the brown recluse doesn’t live here.
All I know is that it’s spring, and they are beginning to come into the house again.
Oh, and there is absolutely no way on this green earth that I am ever going to get close enough to look at (shudder) spider eyes with a magnifying glass. (double shudder)
Time to fix some myths here!
It’s not a brown recluse. I can also say without any doubt that it isn’t a black house spider (Badumna insignis) - they are an Australian spider which we have by the hundreds on the outside of the house, and a few inside - they are my favorite spider and live under my protection - which the birds tend to ignore. It could be the same family as the black house - I have zoomed in on the eyes and, as best I can see, it is possible. Do you have webs around? If so, are they what are called lace-webs, which get dirty quite quickly? Not orb webs, which are the spiral ones.
But it could be just a a lot of possibilities - there are lots of wandering spdiders which don’t build webs. At this time of the year - over there - the males are out looking for females. Have some sympathy - the vast majority will die having never found what they seek!
I am a recovered arachnophobe who is now totally obsessed by spiders. My bias will show in this response! I promise you, kaiwik, it is much better being this way than phobic!
Can you describe the ‘some sort of spider’ which bit you,** kaiwik **?
The spiders which caused horrible bites sounds like the sort of thing which gets reported as spider bites when the actual spider has not been seen. The description vaguely fits brown recluse, about which there is paranoia - except in the areas where they are ridiculously common. They won’t be in Alaska. Antibiotics won’t do anything against spider bites - they are not bacterial. They will work against what is often mistaken for a spider bite which is a bacteria in the soil, maybe carried on the fangs of soil residents - although not necessarily spiders. There is dispute about whether the hobo spider, which is found in Alaska, causes the sort of reaction you describe.
All spiders (except one family) are venomous - that’s how they kill prey. The very few who can harm humans, other than a local, temporary reaction, are rare, and even so, rarely bite. No-one has died of spider bites in Western countries for decades, and few ever did. They will avoid you given half a chance!
Thanks for the information lynne-42, you have a lot of enthusiasm for the crawlies!
I cannot describe the spider which has been responsible for biting quite a few people as I haven’t caught one “in the act”. It’s definitely a bite, local doctors say that it’s a spider. My bites occurred when I was living in the Bush, so I didn’t see a doctor for my bites. I tend to have a strong allergic reaction to bites and stings, so I treated it as I would any other and after a few weeks (about a month or so) the pain and swelling subsided. The conditions under which my son was bitten was a warm summer day, he and his sister had been playing outside in the long grass/bushes and around the edges of my flower beds - always a popular place for spiders. I understand that antibiotics won’t help with a venomous bite, but there was, in my son’s case, definitely something in the bite causing a rapid reaction. Since he was outside it is entirely possible that he came in contact with something after the skin was broken by the bites. The only other biting insects we have here have wings, we have no ants, centipedes, millipedes, etc. In fact, other than the cockroaches which have come here from Outside in furniture and other household goods, the only other insects I have observed crawling are aphids, and a small black beetle, and they don’t bite.
Looking at the Hobo spider’s web, I think we have a winner. Every spring one of these spiders ends up in a high corner of the living room and spins a web which looks like this. As long as the spider stays in sight, I let it live in the corner and catch all the flying annoyances that wander in.
I appreciate you taking the time to write such an informative post. While I am not as horribly phobic as I was when I was younger, I still prefer the spiders to stay out of doors. I am grateful that they prey on insects, and in my garden I leave them be. I don’t plan on ever sharing my bed, willingly, with them though!
I have no fear of spiders and will catch them and take them to a shed instead of letting them live in my house(along with all other bugs and stuff that get in)
Are you sure that no deaths from spider bites have occured?
I believe that is a HOLYFUCKINGSHITGETITOFFMEANDBURNITWITHFIRE! spider. Take the necessary precautions.
ETA: And now to top off all my other neurosis, I’ll be obsessively looking under my pillow with a baseball bat for the rest of my life.
I could find no recent case of one when I did the research for my book. For Australia, where we have quite a few highly venomous spiders, only two have ever been known to kill and there have been no deaths from a confirmed spider bite since the antivenoms: redback spiders (our version of the black widow) was introduced in 1956, and for funnel-webs in 1980. Our funnel-webs are like trapdoor spiders, not like what Americans call funnel-webs.
The American statistics were similar. I just don’t have them as easily to hand, because I don’t quote them as often. There were some possible deaths from the Brazilian Wandering Spider in South America.
Out of the 40,000 or so described spider species, divided into 3,676 (or so - they keep changing it) genera, only 4 genera have species that have been known to kill (Phoneutria, Atrax, Latrodectus and Loxosceles.): the Brazilian Wandering Spider, Sydney funnel-web, a few of the widow spiders and a few of the recluses. Three other genera include species that toxologists believe have the potential to kill: Australian funnel-webs, mouse spiders and the six-eyed sand spiders (Hadronyche, Missulena and Sicarius). Many species within these genera are not fatal to humans. In fact the toxicologists rate the mouse spider (Missulena) venom as 5 times as deadly as the Sydney funnel-web. We have them commonly on our bush block. But they have never caused a death - well, that we know of.
There are 13 confirmed deaths due to the Sydney funnel-web, supposedly the most deadly of all spiders - 13 deaths since records began in 1927! And 26 deaths due to spider bites in Australia over the last 100 years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australasian_funnel-web_spider
If only our roads were so safe!
Thanks…only thing I could find other than the deadly toilet seat spider is this
http://www.mahalo.com/How_to_Treat_a_Spider_Bite
and just from browsing that article and the link provided from there I don’t see any confirmed.
Very fascinating, thanks lynne-42.
I do have to say, out of all the venomous spiders, the funnel-webs are the only one that look like actual killing machines. They are the stuff of nightmares.
Okay, maybe the Brazilian comes a close second.
sob
Speaking as one who has a bigger collection of Alaskan spiders than the University of Alaska does, Kaiwik’s original photo looks very much like the species Callobius pictus, which is possibly the most common large spider in southern Alaska lowlands. Just one thing doesn’t match: the carapace (front section of body) and legs should be more reddish rather than dead black. However, almost any color of spider can look “black” to an arachnophobe, and poorly lit photos are often off color. I’d say it’s probably a Callobius, but one of the rarer relatives (such as Arctobius agelenoides) is also possible. These are in the family Amaurobiidae. The bites of Amaurobiids are an immediate “ouch” like a bee or wasp sting, but without their potential for allergic reaction, and have no other ill effects. You’d never be bitten by an amaurobiid and not know it.
Here’s an authentic photo of a Callobius pictus from Washington. I couldn’t find an Arctobius photo.
There are positively no brown recluses in Alaska. You might as well expect to find an alligator. And contrary to what Lynne heard somewhere, the hobo spider has not yet been confirmed in Alaska either. It’s the only one of the 50 states with zero toxic-to-humans spiders.
One thing for sure, Alaska is as well supplied as any other state with idiot doctors who will call any skin lesion whatsoever a spider bite! There are at least 50 different medical conditions that get misdiagnosed as spider bites. Most of them are not actually the bite of anything. And some are far more life-threatening than any actual spider bite. So this misdiagnosis problem is not a joke - a few people have actually died because they were treated for a non-existent “spider bite” instead of for what they actually had. Here are links discussing some of the more common real causes of “spider bites.”
Causes of Necrotic Wounds other than BRS Bites | Spider Research
http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/site/free/hlsa0805.htm
http://www.jabfm.org/cgi/content/full/17/3/220
That's No Spider Bite: Antibiotic Resistant Staph Infections Now Very Common - ABC News
No no … they have smaller quarters in Alaska.
Thanks for that clarification, arachnologus. Is it true that there is no confirmed medical reaction to the hobo spider bite - that it may also be a myth? I found a great deal of varying information on the hobo spider - the Europeans think it is harmless while some American reports were that they seriously doubted it caused necrotic reactions, but were not ready to call it a total myth.
You can put me about halfway into that last camp. There is no doubt that my old friend Darwin Vest (who became a missing person in 1999, so can’t defend his work now) got severe reactions to the bites of male hobo spiders on lab rabbits. It is reported that Greta Binford (Lewis & Clark College) tried to reproduce those results using pure venom, and couldn’t. However, Greta’s results haven’t been published, so we can’t really evaluate them. For all I know she might have used female venom, which in Darwin’t study had little effect on rabbits.
What is really causing the widespread “hobo doubt” syndrome is the continued lack of a smoking gun (I’d say smoking spider but that would sound too bizarre :)). We still lack a case where a human who was completely healthy initially, was bitten by a hobo spider, had the biting spider competently identified, and developed the allegedly classic syndrome. And we have a number of cases where humans and dogs were bitten by identified hobo spiders and developed no lesions. Those cases are easily explained away as “dry bites” but it’s still rather suspicious. However, the jury is still out. in my own career I’ve encountered several of those “dry bite” cases, but also one case where a kitten was found dead 
with a semi-mashed hobo spider under it. Meanwhile, in places like Missouri, genuine brown recluse bites with the biting spider competently identified happen every year. But they’re surprisingly uncommon considering that the average homeowner there could have as many as 2000 of the reclusive little creatures in the house, without ever being bitten!
Regarding Hobo spiders. They do not climb up walls very far, a foot or so and usually sit there head down. If you have a spider making a web up in the corner of a room, it’s not a hobo.
Hobo’s nest usually under the house in moist areas and only come out in August looking for love in all the wrong places.
I live in Oregon and have a few under the house.
I made the mistake of clicking on “Here” and jumped about six feet when I saw the nasty little bugger.
It’s clearly a JESUSCHRISTKILLITWITHFIRE!