Hi there,
I live in Nelson, BC and I found this spider in the cellar and decided to capture it because I'd never seen a spider this big around here. It is about 3 inches tip to toe and he is ravenous, I've been feeding him 2-4 flies a day and he attacks them quite viciously.
Any ideas?
Your 'he' is a female funnelweb spider (family Agelenidae) in the genus Tegenaria - see http://tinyurl.com/ybmjdst for an example. Some species can attain quite an impressive size but generally are not considered dangerous. There is a lot of anecdotal information implicating an introduced species (Tegenaria agrestis, aka the hobo spider) as causing necrotic bites similar to those of recluse spiders, but actual scientific evidence of this appears scanty at best.
