RenShen

Times like this you need a bloody big lizard to come along and let nature take its course

walaj

No keep them...........you might be able to claim that $1k per child Rudd handout

TiddlyPom

That's some serious muller!

TiddlyPom

I'm thinking about it, but I hear they run everywhere if they panic.

hevs

Right that it! I'm gonna puke. I have been brave and gone along with it, but you just crossed the line....

TiddlyPom

Spider update!

I was worried for them without their mother but they've got it sorted.


They ate her.


And now, they're leaving home. They're all round the coving in the lounge room on their way out.

Cheetah7

Waste not want not I guess.

Are you going to let them all live in your house or will you show them the door?

Tiggs+Graz

i am sure there must be a witty reply to this but after a couple of glasses of wine i just cant think of it!

you are going to be finding spiders all over your house for weeks!

TiddlyPom

They're cute tiny huntsmans which are finding their own way out. I'll leave the door for them.


Quite possibly. Tonight I found a female funnelweb on the carpet and put it outside. Three years ago I would have had a hissy fit and sprayed it to kingdom come... I'm much more benevolent these days.

ozbaz

I hope we'll get to OZ in time for the first birthdays/ first anniversary of death
by birth. ( whichever came first). Maybe they will be ...hm....not good at maths....multiply by 200...and accounting for males with low sperm count...
possibly 35.000 new little spiders running around. You 'll have to get a bigger house!


Mrs Ozbaz,
lover of all animals except ladybirds and anything that crunches underfoot

Tez and Daz

Ha Ha, love it, thanks for keeping us all updated. I too save all the little (and big) spiders that find there way in, though saying that as far as I know none of them have been harmfull!!!!! I will probably learn the hard way one day!

NigelWaring

The dead mother is usually their first meal. They will not live together, if you tried they would soon be eating each other and you would end up with one big one.

Funnel web and red back spiders are prevalent where I live, I could send you some if you'd like something really interesting to study.

NigelWaring

This spider was also featured in Life in the Undergrowth, its one of the many St George’s Cross spiders. You might be able to see another similar but very much smaller spider nearby, this is not a baby, it’s the male. The male has to be very careful because the female has a habit of eating them after mating, in fact it is very rare for a male to survive, they keep coming back for more, the female decides when enough is enough and then wraps them up in a cocoon that is added to her larder for future use.








When you see a cobweb nest of this type, panic! The spider that makes it is found all over the world and is mainly dangerous. The antivenom did not become available until1956. This one is on my garage door and is about 18 months old. There is another one on the other side of the door, when they expand their territory one will probably eat the other. The one in the next picture is the largest at the moment.


We call this the Red Back (Latrodectus mactans hasselti), in North America it’s called the Black Widow (Latrodectus arthropoda chelicera) and is described as their most venomous spider being fifteen times as toxic as the venom of the prairie rattlesnake. South Africans call it a Koppie Spider, Kiwis a Night Stinger, Russians a Karakurt and in Europe a Malmignatte; it is also found in South America with many different names. We also have another relative, the smaller Brown Widow (Latrodectus geometricus). I haven’t been able to find any record of it in the United Kingdom.

The experts so far have not agreed on very much about these spiders, each version having several very different taxonomic names; if you ask half a dozen of them for advice you will more than likely get six different answers. I chose the taxonomic names used by both Brisbane and Melbourne Universities. Some experts cannot agree if they are all the same species, a few insist that they are not. In about 1960 some cross breeding was attempted in New Zealand, they were unable to produce any fertile young, this alone could mean that genetic isolation had inhibited fertile young rather than species difference. The definition of the same species is something that is able to breed and produce fertile young.

There is even some doubt as to whether this is a native species or was it introduced. By 1870 about 200 different species of spider had been recorded in Australia but no Red Backs, suddenly they were being recorded all over the place, the first ones near to the Queensland ports. They are now quite prolific all over the country and one theory is that if they were around in the same numbers prior to 1870 they surely would have been recorded. DNA analysis may one day answer this question; someone just needs a grant to do it.




This is a Stick Spider of the family tetragnathidae. I've been watching out for this one for a while because it is rather unusual. Its back is a silver colour and looks almost like cooking foil, it helps to reflect the heat. Most of the time these spiders stay in the shade but I disturbed it when pruning, I only had a short time to get a picture because it was getting distressed and I had to return it to the trees.



It is only recently that it was found that this spider belonged to a new family tetragnathidae rather than the more common araneidae. Its unusual features are that it bites first then wraps its prey later. Like most spiders this one has eight eyes but these are organised in two rows, most other spiders have one or two very big eyes and the others can be almost anywhere around their head, the positioning is often used to identify them. This spider builds a horizontal web which is quite open in the centre, most spiders have a dense centre to their near vertical webs.

TiddlyPom

I'd read that the mother carries the babies around for a few weeks with huntsmen spiders. So I'm not sure she dies in all cases... ?



Fab post Nigel. I like the St George's Cross spiders. Got quite a few photos of them, as they're very pretty. I like the silver one! Never seen one of those before.

Don't have any redbacks here, though did at my last house.... they seemed happy to be left alone though.

Cheetah7

We have loads of redbacks, found one drowned in my dogs water bowl outside last week.

Hoping pest control can spray the house ASAP.