Living in an area with a lot of Black Widows and Brown Recluses... This isn't entirely true. It's also morally correct to protect yourself, depending on the type of spider.
Non-venomous spiders are always chill though.
Black widows can go outside, but they generally like to stay outside anyways. I've never seen one in the house.
Brown recluse love being indoors.
Black widows, being Theridiids, actually make great indoor spiders. They love to make webs in corners under furninture and such.
And the great thing about them is: they stay put. Once a Theridiid (spider of that famiily) establishes a web, they pretty much only move when they are distrubed or don't find enough food. So if you know that you have one and occationally feed it, you can almost guarantee it will stay there.
Except when it's a male, those will abandon the web once they reach maturity and start wandering around looking for love. But the great thing there is: Males are not medically significant! Only the adult females are and those will stay in their web until they die under the previous mentioned conditions.
So unless you have pets or kids that might unknowingly distrub the spider, you could reasonably keep those indoors.
Recluses on the other hand are active hunters, they will wander around. It's not like they want to be indoors, they just have a much higher chance of ending up there. But those should be put outside.
But if you feed your females and let the males roam around, don't you wake up one day with more baby spiders than corners in your abode?
Yes, yes you would!
Oh wait, that wasn't what you were going for? I really just want more spiders.
You can have all of mine. Spiders love to bite my spouse and he's quadriplegic so he's not provoking them.
Yup. If it isn't a friendly neighborhood jumping spider, I'm bringing a cup and a piece of paper and it's out with the spider. Not risking the life of my tiny dog.
They can live in my house, that's fine. But why you gotta be in my shower, after I've just gotten undressed? You can get the fuck outta my house, perverted spider.
Don't mind me, just reusing my memes (it's better than recycling)
I once killed a giant house spider that was stuck in my tub. Family demanded I do it. I still feel bad about it.
I can deal with that even. I drew the line, though, when the spider that was hanging out on the ceiling above the shower for a week decided it was time to descend and introduce itself in the middle of my shower.
They're trying to protect you from insects that might have the audacity to try to eat your soap or climb into your scrubby things.
In my neck of the woods spiders need to be identified before I can let them stay. Just last year I found multiple widow spiders and a brown recluse in my apartment building, goodness I'm glad to be out of there.
[email protected] will gladly take your ID requests. (I'm a mod there, this is self-promo).
Thanks!! 🕷️🕷️
There is plenty of spiders that aren't well suited for indoor life and, unless it's currently freezing, will be better off outside.
Orb-weavers, for example, will have a hard time finding a good spot for a web indoors (and if they do, it's usually inconvenience for the human cohabitants). Larger prowling spiders will also be unable to find enough food indoors (unless you live in filth).
I really just would stick to Pholcidae and Theridiidae* spiders in lived-in spaces and maybe some Agelenidaes in the attic/basement/shed.
* probably want to skip black widows if you have cats or children.
Every year a few bold jumping spiders move into my house and they keep any and all bugs away. I love them and they're so fucking cute. I watched my current male, Captain Jack (he started his adventure in my house by living in a box of captain crunch), go after a fly last night. It was great.
I accidentally rolled over a jumping spider with my chair, it made me sad.
The brown recluse can get fucked though.
Brown recluses suck. Jumping spiders are just dogs with more legs. They can remember human faces and will even play with humans
Brown recluse aren't nearly as bad as people think though. They are very passive, reclusive (heh) spiders and only bite people in exeptional circumstances, like getting trapped against the skin by clothing. But when you can see the spider, it's really not that different than handling any other spider.
I'm definitely not a good benchmark for spider tolerance, though and I won't condemn people for killing medically significant spiders in their homes. But they are still pretty cool, overall benefitial, spiders and shouldn't be killed (and certainly not fucked) if it can be avoided.
tagging @[email protected] because you also replied to this.
Do you live in an area that has them in high numbers?
They might be reclusive nesters, but they're a hunting spider and they constantly roam around looking for food. They'll roam around your bathrooms, blankets, clothes, and they're fast AF boii.
Important things are keeping your bed away from the walls, checking the blanket and pillow before you get in bed, and checking clothes and shoes before you put them on, since like you said, they can bite if trapped between something and your skin.
Do you live in an area that has them in high numbers?
Sadly not, never got to have any of those. I had black widows, but we had to buy them.
Important things are keeping your bed away from the walls, checking the blanket and pillow before you get in bed, and checking clothes and shoes before you put them on, since like you said, they can bite if trapped between something and your skin.
Yup. But if you do that (even half-assed), there is a pretty good chance you'll never ever get bitten.
All spiders are cool just because they're spiders. Brown recluses are scary ones though. Had a friend almost lose her pinky finger after one bit her. I just leave them alone if I see them. Thankfully, I've never encountered one inside my home.
Had a friend almost lose her pinky finger after one bit her.
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to undermine your or your friend's story or imply anything, if you don't want to engage further, I totally understand.
But: As a hobby arachnologist, I've heard these kinds of stories soooo many times. However when you look the scientific literature, there a bunch of studies that show a systematic pattern of misdiagnosed spider bites ... and and astonishing lack of studies covering actual, confirmed spider bites and their medical impacts.
I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "almost lose her pinky", but she probably didn't? A local doctor probably gave her some antibiotika (which is for bacteria and does fuck all against venom) and that was it.
My friend had some kind of necrosis on her pinky that left it super disfigured. I have no idea what they gave her for it, but she told me she got bit by a brown recluse. We were also 14, so she could have been lying to seem cool? I do know that her finger was gross as hell.
Yeah, this is usually how these stories go. It was a long time ago, the spider wasn't collected, word of mouth can change the story overtime. Maybe a spider was involved and is just to be remembered as part of the story now. Who knows.
🤷♀️
I know 2 people that received recluse bites. One almost died and the other ended up with a big chunk of flesh taken out of their leg.
Those sound like serious medical cases. I hope the spiders involvment was well documented, because that's extremly rare.
Nope, doctors usually say "teehee, brown recluse never bite anybody!"
If you have a laser pointer you can play with them like a cat (also works with the mouse courser if you they walk onto a computer screen)!
Omg incredible. I'm gonna have to get a laser pointer just for my spiders. I've waited 2 years for a male to show up and it has me so stoked.
Same with house centipedes. They are friends, even if they look like something out of a sci fi movie.
Tucked away in a corner? Fine. Skittering, creeping, or otherwise ambulating across my floor? Nyet nein nope evicted.
My house stays 6 to 8 months completely closed. When windows or doors are open, there’s always a bug screen. So, if I leave the tiny spider alone, it will probably die of starvation. The morally correct thing is to take it outside.
I prefer to exclude all uninvited critters as well. But i believe little spiders can get some nourishment from eating their old web when it's full of dust, which as we know contains a lot of shed human skin cells.
If they ain’t payin’ rent, they can get fuckin’ bent.
I try to kindly remove them where possible, but my empathy-to-arachnophobia ratio has a fine limit.
Jumping spiders are free to do as they please, however. Those mfs rule
If they're alive, that means they're eating, which means they're doing pest control.
That’s great, but I don’t want anything with more than four limbs in my apartment
Yea that's pretty much my policy except for spiders in my bed. Also notorious exceptions have been female huntsman spiders in summer and Sydney funnelwebs.
Had a window spider in my bathroom that I fed regularly. It molted one day and was huge - went from skittle size to dime size (including legs).
It died a few weeks later. Not sure why.
It's quite common in some spiders to have a "maturity moult" after which the spider will change their behaviour to focus on reproduction. They will often stop eating and males will go wandering around looking for females, while the females will build and guard an egg sac.
Aw damn, so I cock blocked him?
Haha, maybe. It was just some general info. "Window spider" is not a colloquial name for any specfic group of spiders as far as I am aware, so I have no idea what kind of spider you actually had there.
If they keep a respectable distance then they can stay. If they get too close they are outta here
If I didn't relocate them my cats would kill and possibly eat them. It's better for everyone this way
Excep the cats
It's always don't kill them. How do I get more spiders damn it?
If your abdomen is visible from a meter away, you're getting evicted. I don't want to know what your guts look like when I accidentally step or sit on you.
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