Steatoda Grossa - possibly

[Kaetlinv]

Well me and my roommate thought we had a brown recluse in the dorm a few days ago. It escaped and was left unconfirmed. Well that same spider showed up again this evening and this time i was successful in not alarming it, allowing some amateur study and research.

Here is the closest / clearest photo I could get, this is its underside.


It's missing a few halves of some legs, but isn't lacking the fore or hind legs. Its behavior is looking exactly like what several sites have said; Hanging upside down in three dimensional webs that appear to have no order, and nocturnal.

This is a photo I found online of a clearer Steatoda grossa,




If what I believe is correct, the one in my home is a female, and quite possibly I have found one of her babies! This little tyke is about the size of a grain of sand, also hanging upside down in a similar web.




I dislike spiders in my home... But I unfortunately do not have any disposable cups to catch her and take her outside, so until I can find a way to easily transport her without dropping her I'll leave her be. No worry about my roommate killing her, she's more terrified than I am.

[Lankyrob]

Why use a disposable cup?? I just use a coffee mug or a pint glass and then wash it up afterwards

[Kaetlinv]

My roommate is terrified of spiders. If she even thought I used one of the real cups she would freak... But I'll attempt it tonight when they're active. They're fast buggers though and pick difficult corners to snag them...

Now I'm not sure, but I saw a BIGGER one in the corner we originally found it, so I'm thinking there may be more than one here, which is fully possible since I found a second (larger) baby.

I've got tall cups so hopefully I won't accidentally hurt them by trying to trap them under the cup...They move awfully fast and with all those trip wire like web lines and their sensitivity to vibrations they might know what's happening before I do it!

I'll admit I don't like spiders in 'my' areas, and usually any spider within the home gets killed (try to do so fast, so they don't suffer...), but any spider OUTSIDE is safe. Just the other night me and my roommate and a friend were walking on the concrete pathway into the dorms - one of them screams and jumps a little, pointing at the ground and stuttering like a little kid. I look and squint and there is a black blotch, bigger than a quarter, on the ground. I look a little closer and sure enough it's a spider of the wandering variety, or at least a typical 'outdoor' spider that doesnt normally venture inside houses. I scoff and tell them I'm not going to kill it. My roommate starts to panic and say 'Just kill it before it gets the chance to get into the dorms! Why won't you just kill it?!' in a rather huffy pissed off and panicked tone. I tell her that it's outside, not doing anyone any harm and this is a type of spider that typically stays outside, and that I refuse to kill it. They were already closer to the dorm room than they were to the spider, so I effectively kept walking and forced them down the narrow path.

It was a very pretty spider on that path, and I keep looking for it or signs of webs on the ground in the close vicinity. I've got a feeling it was a wolf spider of some sort, it was pretty big compared to the spiders I normally see around here. About the size of a male hobo spider, but too dark to be a hobo.

Ack, I've let myself rant again.... Summary, I'll try catching the false widows tonight, haha.

[DragonsEye]

If you have spiders -- particularly the larger ones -- in your home, odds are they are finding a plentiful food supply. Killing them off merely allows that many more bugs free reign in your domecile.

That is definitely NOT a recluse. Not only is the body form wrong, so is the habit. A recluse does not make a tangled web, nor does it hang upside down in such a web. (If you were to find one in such a position in such a web then it would be there as a meal for the actual web inhabitant.)

The photo you found for Steatoda grossa is of an immature spider. Mature females tend to be quite large and usually have no markings at all -- just a fairly dark brown to black overall body color. This is a pic, albeit a lousy one, of a female I had for a while.

Never ceases to amaze me how many folks insist on 'wiggin out' over a spider but will not hesitate to hop in a car or walk up to a dog. You are FAR more likely to get harmed or killed by a dog or in a car related event than bitten ... let alone seriously hurt ... by a spider. (And yes that includes the black widows and recluse.)

[Kaetlinv]

True, I know I freaked out about calling it a brown recluse. Second time around I studied it more and had a nice breath of relief. My fear of spiders is more of them walking around on me then biting me because of my own movement (I know they don't bite for the sake of biting) startling them.

I honestly would leave them be, they're not in the bedrooms and they go hide after about 5 minutes of us being present in the room. I think I will leave them as long as my roommate doesn't notice.

Unfortunately any spider found in or around my bed I really dislike... I don't relish being crawled on. It's an irrational fear I've got and I'm sure I could get over it one day, but at the present moment I don't know anyone with a spider as a pet, or a spider that would tolerate my nervous nature, lol.

[Kaetlinv]

This fellow (I've now confirmed there are two of these spiders, plus two babies of different sizes) is going to feed well tonight.

Accidentally let in a few crane flies this evening trying to bring in cool night air, I relocated three of them but didn't notice the fourth until I glanced back at the False widow's web to see it struggling in the binds. I considered putting it out of its misery but decided to wait and see if the spider showed itself. Sure enough a half hour later or so I look back and the little spider is sitting in its web and the crane fly is spasming with dying energy. The spider hid when I shone a light on it, but when I looked back a minute or two later I scrambled to grab my phone and got these three (poor quality) videos of the Steatoda getting a fine meal

As much as i dislike spiders touching me, it was amazing to watch / catch this process!

Videos soon!

[Kaetlinv]

Sorry for background noise, this was rather unpredicted. i was watching family guy... just mute them, haha. no noise needed anyhow :P


Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:

[Kaetlinv]

Managed to get a decent shot of the spider with the crane fly UNDER the vent! This is such a hard guy to capture... He's behind a couch, in a corner, under a vent that comes out 5 inches and is off the ground only 3. It's dark, and he's pretty darned small.

Not the greatest picture, but I'm proud of the difficulty (I don't want to move the couch, startling / disturbing the spider.