I was in a garage today in cardiff, south wales. I tipped an old bag upside down and this spider fell out. It was about 1-1.5cm long (just the body, not the legs) it was jet black with no markings at all. I've looked everywhere and everything points to the spider being a black widow. I want to believe its a false widow but there was no markings at all and i understand that it is quite common for a black widow to be completely black. Any help would be much appreciated.
Sorry the picture isn't great. I didn't want to get close!
Most likely a false widow (Steatoda sp.) -
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2007/may/news_11767.html
You say 'most likely', does this mean there is a chance it could be a black widow?
did anyone else notice that this spider has 10 legs? Unless those are shadows.
This message was edited Mar 6, 2012 7:40 PM
The chances of it being a true black widow approach zero; I used "most likely" because I am not familiar with all the spiders that could occur in Britain and thought that there could be other species with a similar appearance. The extra legs undoubtedly are shadows or another artifact of the exposure.
