We have found four of these in our house in the past three days. Sorry for the poor photo - it is through a ball jar that causes distortion. Needless to say I'm not taking it out until I have a better idea what it is. FWIW I'm in Pensacola, FL (the FL panhandle) in a house that is about 40 years old. They are really a solid black in color with the orange/red spots, long legs, no hair on them. Thanks for any help!!
This message was edited Sep 14, 2011 7:12 PM
The spider is actually a bit more black than this photo looks.
Looking down on a Black Widow it looks like a shiny black bead. About the size of a pearl. What I know as a pearl as in necklace. This spider's legs do not look like the BW. The BW has a red spot on the underneath side of the body. They are very fast. With movement they will dart into cover. I had one under my bathroom sink, a stand alone sink. It put it's web over the doorway where I felt it when I went into the bathroom without turning on the light at night. Fortunately it was not in the web. But, when it saw movement it would dart under the washbowl. (during the day) I finally caught it out of the corner of my eye.
I understand what you are saying and that is what made me unsure. In these pictures the spider's body is twisted against the glass - I was trying to get the underbelly. It really has an hourglass on the underbelly. But as you said from the top it is not qute as bulbous, and it has orange spots on top too. That was why I wasn't sure. We were concerned because my elderly mom had to be hospitalized earlier in the month with a bad spider bite (according to the ER), then I saw four of these in the house in the last two days. They are very fast and about .5 inches long. We want to spray the house if they are indeed bad spiders. Could this be the australian version of the widow? We are rigth on the alabama border of the panhandle, as far W as possible, so within the range of the Australian escapee from what I've read on the net. But that spider also looks more bulbous... I don't want to spray and kill these if they are completely innocuous good spiders.
Also for background, I am a book collector and while we keep a very clean home, I collect old books and am being blamed that the spiders must have come in with a load of old books I bought on ebay. I buy all over the world, from Sweden, to England, Australia, Isreal, New Zealand, wherever I can find a book I am looking for. So it may be an odd, imported beastie potentially. Thanks!
Due to your mother's trip to the ER and their assessment, I think you should take one to a specialist somewhere. Seems to me that if the ER people said that, then they should have told you what spider it was.
I googled "spider specialist" and got this. "Rick Vetter over at UC Riverside Dept of Entomology also has a page on Entomology – Brown Recluse Spiders. "
You might do some googling on your own and find someone to contact. Good luck,
i always thought black widows had a red dot on their backs? maybe i'm thinking of a different kind
I don't know of anyone in an ER that could tell you what kind of spider it was by the bite alone. They would need the actual spider. There are BWs that have red markings on their backs as well as the underside. This one has a different body shape.
I would follow up with Jnette's advice and have an expert look at your beastie.
I'm certainly in favor of keeping good spiders but have come to decide that if they are inside my house they are to be killed UNLESS I know they are harmless to people and beneficial such as jumping spiders.
Sorry Sally, if they are in my house I don't wait to figure out if they are good or bad. They have to go if I can get them.
I support you; for me, being familiar with jumping spiders I can easily recognize , I keep them alive, outside.
Forgot, Gregbaker, BWs have a red spot on their stomach. Underneath side. They are like black patent leather balls. Very shiny. Looking down from above.
I really believe that this is a black widow. They all don't have the red hour glass. Sometimes they are just red spots and they can have red spots front and back. I would be really careful with them and try to get them ID'd with a professional.
And, I missed your post of it having a red hourglass on it. So that makes me almost certain that's what it is. Not all look like a ball. Google pictures of them and you'll see what I mean. Take one to an exterminator and they should be able to tell.
Here is an example of one on this site. Shows more of the body shape of yours and shows how the red can be different on them.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/fp.php?pid=8082260
That is creepy. I have never seen anything like that. Not too happy about our wetter area but sure beats being dry and having those things around.
that is definitely a female black widow spider, Latrodectus mactans
the degree of black on their bodies depends upon how many times they have molted.
they begin with the same colouring as males,
overall olive colour with complex red and cream pattern underneath,
also red and cream stripes on the back. the pattern is typically, one stripe down
the middle of the back, and then a set of parallel stripes from it, angling downward and backward.
these stripes have a red core, surrounded by cream.
through successive instars, the females' olive/amber background colour quickly turns black, and the cream disappears, then, gradually the red. the last remaining red on an adult female is the red hourglass on the belly.
then, further instars result in the splitting of the hourglass into to red marks, then onwards to no red at all, if she lives long enough.
the males never lose their juvenile colouration through their entire life.
the reason her abdomen looks weird, is that it is shriveled.
she just hasn't eaten in a long time, and if she is stressed, and doesn't eat soon, she will perish.
if the jar remains unmoved overnight, and she hasn't built some sort of confused web,
she is doomed. if she hasn't built a confused, but clean, web with taught strands within a couple days of the jar not having been disturbed, better to put her out of her misery.
if she does set web, put a small bug in for her, to revive her.
a fly, a bee, or small cricket are best.
when a female is eating regularly, her abdomen inflates like a balloon.
the real give-away between males, and juvenile females, is the appearance of their pedipalps, or "feelers", at their mouth.
males have bulbous ones, because that's their sex organ.
females have tiny ones, like little feeler legs, tiny and slim, no bulk, no matter how big she is.
i just published this time-lapse video yesterday, of an adult male being placed on a new structure, free of web.
in this first hour+ on the structure surrounded by a moat, you can see that he checks out the extent of his new world,
sets down some basic strands that he can then navigate with, and then sets up at the high point and chills
i believe he is Latrodectus hesperus, but his colouration is typical of males, and of juvenile females of the mactans species, as well.
when you see a female she may look like this, or like any one of the stages in the sequence of her losing her colour and becoming all black, so that is what you are looking for, ... something anywhere from this, to jet black high gloss.
i have been keeping, and raising black widow spiders, off and on, since 1976
video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je96UIquQ8g
This message was edited Sep 22, 2011 6:33 AM
Here is an example of one on this site. Shows more of the body shape of yours and shows how the red can be different on them.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/fp.php?pid=8082260
Thanks bokisan, very informative!
We have found four of these in our house in the past three days. Sorry for the poor photo - it is through a ball jar that causes distortion. Needless to say I'm not taking it out until I have a better idea what it is. FWIW I'm in Pensacola, FL (the FL panhandle) in a house that is about 40 years old. They are really a solid black in color with the orange/red spots, long legs, no hair on them. Thanks for any help!!
This message was edited Sep 14, 2011 7:12 PM
BWs can and do have spots.
http://bugguide.net/index.php?q=search&keys=black+widow&search=Search
I've also encountered black widows with red on their upperside, as well as undersides.
Not something I was thrilled to run into while weeding the pine bark nuggets.
Google image results for southern black widow:
http://www.google.com/search?q=northern+black+widow&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=h5LbToCOPKfx0gGusOyGDg&biw=1618&bih=941&sei=j5LbTvniLYnn0QHV37maBw#um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=southern+black+widow&pbx=1&oq=southern+black+widow&aq=f&aqi=g2g-S5g-mS3&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=28533l29204l0l29484l8l6l0l0l0l4l228l997l0.5.1l6l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=a020952eddcf770c&biw=1618&bih=941
You can see lots of them have spot on their backs.
This message was edited Dec 4, 2011 10:34 AM
