My husband works in a large automotive factory in NW lower Michigan. A few days ago, he saw a spider that he said didn't look like most of the "funnel weavers" (grass spiders I think they're actually called) that we have here in MI, which are typically gray, rather slender like wolf spiders, and pretty fuzzy. We browsed around on the web and a few times we came across photos of a hobo spider - an invasive species from Europe that's currently in the NW regions of the USA and Canada, he told me that it was exactly what the spider looked like. His plant DOES ship and receive a lot of items from Canada and, in fact, all over parts of the USA, so is it possible that this spider may be a hitch-hiking hobo spider that caught a ride on one of the boxes or totes that were shipped?
He did not get a good picture of the back of the spider yet, but we do have this one... and I asked him to look for the faint "herring bone" marks on the abdomen when he gets a chance, and maybe snap a quick picture of it if it's possible. But I will say it doesn't look like the funnel weavers I've seen here either, and my brother and I used to make a game out of feeding those spiders quite often when we were little kids, so I'm fairly familiar with what the native MI species of those spiders look like.
Edit: He said the spider had the leg diameter of about quarter sized, if that's any help to anyone who might be able to identify this spider.
This message was edited Oct 10, 2008 8:09 AM
