Identifying Spiders
Breaking The Myths Around Identifying Spiders
Many false panics and reports of venomous or aggressive spiders are made by those who have a bit of trouble identifying spiders and their behaviors. These panicky reports tend to be made those who harbor a great fear and misunderstanding toward spiders, and who jump to the worst possible conclusions when it comes to the business of identifying spiders that they may have seen in or around their home environments. These folks just want them gone, and they can’t be faulted for that. Bellow, please find some straightforward and foolproof methods for telling the “good” spiders from the “bad.”
In North America, there are only four families of spiders which have ever proven hazardous or potentially fatal to humans, two of which are not even indigenes to this continent. One of those two is thought to make the most lethal toxin of all arachnids, but rarely releases this venom when he bites humans. He is the Brazilian Wandering Spider, or what we like to call the “bad” banana spider. Banana spiders indigenes to North America are utterly harmless, and bare no resemblance to the Brazilian bully. He enjoys stowing away on shipping freights from his tropical home, nestled safely within the deep cover of banana bunches. He is a shiny tan to dark brown spider with long, slender legs and patterned yellow and orange markings on his abdomen. He is considered aggressive and tends to move very quickly when prepared to strike.
The other stowaway spider, considered very venomous to humans, is what we call the hobo spider. Her eggs made their way from the coast of Europe to a port in Seattle sometime during the early 1930’s. The symptoms of this bite so closely resemble that of the brown recluse spider that there was a bit of confusion until the 1960’s. He has claimed the northwestern tip of the US, a region which proves a bit too harsh for the brown recluse. The hobo spider is a bit fuzzy, and has not marks on his legs. His dark brown thorax is doubled striped from the mouth to the base of the abdomen with a lighter brown or tan.
Identifying spiders of the recluse family can be a bit more challenging, as there are 14 species of this family in North America. No need to panic, however, as only the brown recluse is considered to be a hazard. He is often called the fiddle or violin spider for his abdominal adornment which takes this shape. He can be aggressive, but prefers his privacy and quiet. Most encounters with the brown recluse are in passing, and any consequences rendered are born of self defense on his part.
When identifying spiders in the widow family, the rule are really quite simple. The northern black widow can be found in the south, but the southern black widow will never be seen to the north. The northern bares two hourglass shapes on the underneath of the abdomen, while the southern boasts only one. The red and brown widows are basically just varying tints of the widow’s ultra shiny exoskeleton. The markings on any color widow can be red, yellow, orange, or white.