The Deadly Hobo Recluse Funnel Widow

[kynekh_amagire]

So I'm kind of stuck at home today, keeping an eye on the doglet, with nothing to amuse myself but the Internet. It's okay: I make my own fun.

Like Googling "deadly brown recluse" until I feel superior, for example.

Poor huntsman.

That isn't even a spider.

Agelenid.

Wolf spider, looks like.

'Nother wolf.

Golden silk spider!

Orb weaver!

Comments

[archteryx]

So what does a Brown Recluse *actually* look like?

A disabled friend of mine's lived over a decade of hell on Earth because of a confirmed bite by one of those little boogers. Had an entire leg go necrotic on him (though not so much so that it had to be amputated). The idiot authors may not know what the spiders look like, but the real deal's no joke.

[tacet]

They are "fiddlebacks" See over the head.
3/8" to less than 1/2".
Fine leg hairs, no spines.
uniform legs and back with only one color, no mottling.
Bites are actually rare. The spider bit our disabled friend because he was about to roll over it in his sleep.

[kynekh_amagire]

Male.
Female.
Showing eyes.
Here is where you find them.

Lots of spiders are brown, and lots have a "violin" marking. The important characteristics that conclusively distinguish the brown recluse from similar spiders are things like their eye pattern (Loxosceles is a six-eyed genus, with their eyes arranged in three distinct pairs: most spiders have eight). Aside from the infamous violin (which some individuals have, and some don't), they are also unsually smoothly-colored spiders, with no banding or patterning on the legs or abdomen, and no visible spines on the legs. They are also fairly small spiders, mostly not larger than could comfortably stand on a U.S. quarter with legs fully stretched out.

With that said, and with sympathy for your friend, brown recluses aren't a threat to most people. Being bitten at all is rare, considering how common the spider is in its range, and most bites are "dry bites" which inject no venom. Nearly all bites where envenomation definitely took place heal on their own, and misdiagnosis is still

[sandelwood]

I wonder how many bites from other relatively harmless species occur that the individual simply has a bad reaction to, or the spider perhaps carried a bacteria that caused the bite to infect, and was blamed on a recluse.

I mean considering how often people get bitten in their sleep by common varieties of house spiders (I can count on 2 or 3 a year, at least), I think it's possible people are just blaming what they fear instead of an also rare but possible occurrence.

[tacet]

And it is people like this that make us want to smash every spider we see, killing harmless (or less harmful) species out of ignorance! I've handled spiders like the wood louse eating spider. Aggressive with big fangs, but it tolerated being set outside. I knew a nice hunting ground for it and let it go on a fence simply RICH in wood lice as a reward for coming outside.

I've lived with recluses. I never had issues with them. And I live now with wolf spiders. Big, hairy, scary, but harmless.

[kynekh_amagire]

We're walking landscape to most spiders, much too large to waste venom on. Evasion is a much better survival strategy than biting, from a spider's standpoint. Not as good as being invisible, which spiders are also very good at, but close.

I love woodlouse killers. They're so magnificently red. Like garnets with legs.

GIP

[kynekh_amagire]

[corpsefairy]

Okay, I give up: What's the ten-legged thing in the second link?

[kynekh_amagire]

It's a solifugid, also known as a "sun spider" or "wind scorpion". They're all over the southern and western U.S., move very fast, and tend to horrify people who don't know what they are (I, unsurprisingly, think they're kind of cute). When suddenly exposed to sunlight, they will sometimes run for the nearest shade... usually the person who just exposed their hiding place, OH GOD WHAT IS THAT AND WHY IS IT CHASING MEEEEEEEEE.

The version native to the Middle East is called a "camel spider". People believe all sorts of hilariously stupid shit about them, too.

[eclipsegryph]

OMG why are you keeping a brown recluse in our house!?WTFBBQ!1

[kynekh_amagire]

It's a harmless funnel-web spider!

...wait, that doesn't actually sound more harmless, but trust me, it is!