it is a sad thing to give a dead spider a toilet paper funeral, but hey, keep in mind, it's probably a male who died after mating, that's how a lot of species' biology works, so he did his thing and shuffled off in a state of evolutionary and personal satisfaction. :D
hmm, while i'm thinking about her, it might be fun to identify my shower spider. she's the type with a fat, round, slightly teardrop-shaped abdomen, probably the catch-all 'american house spider' like so except that all the pics i can find with that search are brown, and mine is shiny black. i'm wondering if she's a different species or just a color variation. she's not a widow or false widow, her abdomen's the wrong shape and she has no markings. i've also got a spider in the bathroom window that has arranged paint chips and other small debris into a sort of clump in the middle of its web. puts me in mind a bit of decoy spiders https://www.wired.com/2014/01/more-decoy-spiders-philippines/ but of course those don't live here in the frozen north. i haven't gotten a close look at the builder, but fleeting glances made me think it's just a yellow sac spider, which are super common here. yellow sac spiders are very calm and good roommates btw. tiny lemon sweethearts. :3
Oh, man, those huge yellow-and-black orb weavers are my favorites, they dotted the prairie where I used to volunteer and they're so cute. <33 Look at this cutie. That being said... Back when I was agoraphobic in the dorms, my room was a huuuuuge, nasty mess. Since I couldn't leave it to clean, y'know? And I kept waking up with what I assume were wolf spider bites, since they looked like mosquito bites and it was like, January. Like, five at once. Any thoughts on what I might have done to provoke them in my sleep? I don't want to be scared of the dudes, but the uncertainty is a little bit nervewracking. :\
Spider bites aren't all that common tbh, most of the bites attributed to spiders here are actually from midges, horseflies and what we call "berry bogs" aka chiggers. There's some info about identifying bites here which is maybe more use to your specific location? (I know spiders do bite, cause my Sis-in-law was bitten by a redback just last year, but unless you specifically see the spider biting you, identification of a bite is really damn hard.)
My favorite spiders are the little white ones that lived in my MIL's flowers (central NY state). Don't know what they are, but they're lovely and look very nice in flower petals. They might be crab spiders? Not sure. I also spent a great 30 minutes watching a tiny hunting spider stalk and catch one of those red mites that trundle around. Very quick tiny guy!
Yeah, I say spider bites because I know there were a ton of wolf spiders in the room, I saw them running across my bed, and the number of potential culprits was limited, since I was agoraphobic and not leaving the room for weeks on end. -cocks head- There was some concern it might be bedbugs, but I was in the dorms, so that would have become a bigger issue rapidly. Didn't find anything else that seemed likely.
i think it was probably an allergic reaction, actually. i used to get those all the time too, but the spiders in my house are mostly yellow sac spiders and those wee peppercorn looking guys, MUCH too small to get through my tough leg skin. also, de-cluttering my room had no effect on whether i got the 'bites'. however, de-dusting my room made them stop, as did getting a daily allergy med prescribed. it wasn't spider bites, or anything bites. it was from a dust allergy. or an alternative possibility: recently when i was having the worst pain flare-up of my life, i started having intolerably itchy 'mosquito bites' all over my hands and feet. but i never saw a mosquito, and they happened whether or not i was under covers, and new ones sometimes showed up while my hands and feet were in plain sight of me and i know nothing landed on them, let alone bit them. i have sensory processing disorder, i definitely notice even the tiniest bugs landing on me when i'm awake, it's unignorable. so the whole thing was super baffling. well, when i finally ended up in the ER because my pain got so bad, i mentioned the mysteriously appearing bites to the doctor and asked if maybe that was hives or sth even though it didn't look like the the pictures of hives online and i've never had hives in my life. he took a look at it and said confidently, "stress eczema." apparently feeling like you're walking on a broken hip for three days makes you break out in itchy lumps. D: you say you were too agoraphobic to leave your room. that sounds like a lot of stress!
@jacktrash Huh. Okay, that's fascinating. That does sound pretty damn likely! :D I feel much better about my eight-legged roomies. Yeah, I was having a massive PTSD breakdown, it was pretty metal. Panic attacks every couple hours. So some physical reactions would make sense; I'd just never put two and two together before.
even the most aggressive spiders will only bite something as big as a human when they're scared. the chances of you spooking one that bad in your bed multiple times a night are real low. even if there was any reason for it to hang around in the bed, and you moved your leg and spooked it, and it bit instead of running -- then it would leave. and probably not come back ever, because that is a dangerous place with no food. plus, wolf spider bites are mildly venomous and hurt like bee stings, so if you've got wolf spiders, you would know if they bit you. and like i said to kathy, they're pretty chill beasties and don't usually bite unless cornered and harrassed -- just walking on you when you make a sudden move is not generally enough to make them bitey. they'd just abscond.
these guys? yep, those are crab spiders, aka flower spiders, we have them in MN too and they're super cute. :)
fun fact about golden orb spiders, they make golden silk! and by gently and carefully milking a million spiders of their silk (catch and release style, making sure you don't get the same spider too often) you can harvest enough silk to make a garment. http://missmoss.com.au/2012/02/golden-cape-made-with-silk-from-a-million-spiders/ that's not dyed. that is the natural color of their silk. !!!
Spider silk is awesome stuff. The structural applications alone would make it worthwhile to synthesise. Here's the Oxford University research page on silks (some links to articles are behind paywalls.)
We are blessed in our yard to have a big, beautiful spider with a gorgeous web. I was still up when the dawn came so I went out to take some photos before she went to sleep. She has a smiley face on her bum if you look closely, and this makes me very happy.
i love orb weavers, they're so orderly and busy. <3 the first time i saw a golden orb weaver, it was up at the north shore of lake superior, i woke up in the morning and found that one had spun its web across the doorway of my tent. i nearly smacked into it with my face. i was camping with my friend spider (a human whose nickname is spider, because he really likes them and also because he has long knuckly fingers, not an actual spider that is my friend, altho that would be great), so i woke him up and we had Morning Arachnid Appreciation Time before we took a stick and carefully gathered the web off the door and set it and the spider aside into the bushes. anyway, i had not known there were spiders that big and colorful in minnesota, so i did have a little adrenaline-jolt WTF IS THAT THING reaction, but gosh it was pretty. and the neat thing about orb weavers is they will hold still to be admired as long as you like. :)
The silk facts help! I'm terrified of orb weavers, particularly golden ones. While on a school trip in an area that def. qualified as 'bushland' there was a teamwork building orienteering course. My group blindfolded me, and I had to trust their directions on which ways to turn and how far to walk. Being the weird and unpopular one, it followed that they led me smack bang into the middle of a massive golden orbweaver web between two trees, which covered my whole body and left me with an upset and palm sized spider on my blindfold >.>
screams i didn't know we had a spider thread, i love spiders my fav is the antilles pinktoe tarantula a. versi's are so pretty and fuzzy owo
antilles pinktoe females usually have a lot of chub, it's all the more spider to love! they make decent pets, too. they are easy to care for, as far as tarantulas go, and are v cute + timid i hear they are a good tarantula for beginners(although spiders are still very difficult to care for in general) so i'd like to get a few one day
