Over at First Dog he is talking about a bunch of Spiders – most particularly the Black House Spider (Badumna insignis) that he found around his Dad’s house outside of Canberra somewhere…let round one of the My-spider-is bigger-and-nastier-looking-than-your-spider battle commence!
Red-headed Mouse Spider, Missulena occatoria
A couple of weeks ago I was doing my usual morning dog-shit patrol (always amazed when I don’t manage to tread in some) with shovel, bucket and stick, when one of the dogs came across this little fella – obviously NOT a piece of dog-shit!
So that I could continue on my way collecting the dog-shit (and avoid having those fangs on the end of those massive chelicera – I knew I’d get to use that word someday!! – pierce my leather boots) I popped this gentle-looking creature into a glass jar.
Unfortunately she died the next day…
There are eight species of Mouse spiders in Australia with the Red-headed being the most widespread and, for mine, spectacular-looking.
Male Red-headed Mouse Spider
And here is a nice picture of the male (see why it’s called ‘Red-headed’) from those nice people at Advanced Pest Control somewhere in NSW – they have a nice page full of pictures of spiders and they like you to give them money to kill them.
More information can be found at the Australian Museum website, from where I found that:
There are eight species of mouse spiders in Australia and they are widely distributed across the mainland. They vary from 10-35 mm body length and all have distinctively bulbous head and jaw regions. They are often confused with funnel-web spiders. While mouse spider bites are not common, a few have caused serious effects in humans, with symptoms similar to funnel-web spider envenomation. Fortunately, mouse spiders are not usually abundant in heavily populated urban areas.
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*shudder*. … does it eat mice too or is it just that its hideous furry bulbous body looks like a mouse? *double shudder*
OK Bob, and I said this to First Dog. If you want huge spiders, try going down the Amazon from Ecuador to Brasil. Huge huntsman spiders-the size of dinner plates- jump off the banks of the river and onto the sizes of your dinghy then you have to beat them off. Shiver, shiver!! Also when you want to doss down for the night the fist thing you have to do is to sweep the bird-eating spiders out of the hut. I used to have photos. Don’t know what I’ve done with them. Anyway, I don’t have a scanner. HON-EST-LY these are v frightening
.
Look them up. You will see what I mean.
Cheers
V.
OK Bob, and I said this to First Dog. If you want huge spiders, try going down the Amazon from Ecuador to Brasil. Huge huntsman spiders-the size of dinner plates- jump off the banks of the river and onto the sizes of your dinghy then you have to beat them off. Shiver, shiver!! Also when you want to doss down for the night the fist thing you have to do is to sweep the bird-eating spiders out of the hut. I used to have photos. Don’t know what I’ve done with them. Anyway, I don’t have a scanner. HON-EST-LY these are v frightening
.
Look them up. You will see what I mean.
Cheers
V. PS: ‘fist’ should read first
No Sophie – it does not eat mouses – apparently the name comes about from the similarity between the hole that the Mouse Spider makes and that of a mouse – I’ll post a pix of a Mouse Spider hole – they are related to the trapdoor spiders that many of us spent endless hours poking sticks down the holes of as kids…
And for Venise – while I haven’t been to Ecuador or Brasil I was in Venezuela last year and saw some cute bats roosting on the side of a tree in the daylight…and of course lots of great birds and went to some great restaurants where the dinner plates were HUGE and stacked high with delicious meat…now if the spiders are as big as their dinner plates then…well I just don’t want to go there.
We have a whole bunch of nice Huntsman spiders (Huntsmen??) around our house right now…the other day i was folding some washing and picked up a pair of jocks and noticed a few hairy legs and the gravid belly of a female poking out from that little pocket…you don’t need to know any more…anyway she has gone outside to have her babies now…not in my shorts…
Yes, I wondered if the plural was Huntsmen.
I haven’t been to Venezuela but I would have thought they had some big arachnids. The huntsmen-the ones as big as dinner plates, were Tarantulas. And to have five or six of them, on either side of the boat is an elevating experience. Literally. They think they’re going to drown which is why they cling to the sides of the dinghy, and I told you about the bird-eating ones which also are v big but a different shape to the hairy ones. Gosh you are brave, checking out the sex of the spider before taking action, or is the female bigger than the male? You’re right, I don’t care to think of a lady huntsman lurking in your shorts. SHIVER, SHIVER.
Cheers
V.
My mum would rescue huntsmen from the fireplace (the spiders, not the… anyway). They (the spiders) would climb to the end of a log after being forced out of a burning log and she would reach down and let them climb on to her hand and they (the spiders) would then run up and down her arms. I was always very impressed by this and wished I could do it but THEY ARE SO HAIRY (the spiders – not mum’s arms). Anyway, are you saying that mouse spiders can bite through your boot? Is it a steel capped boot or is it a thong?
Your mum sounds a lot braver than me. When I get them at home I try to catch them-using a hollow tube (A roll of lavatory paper, without the paper works well), when I’m certain they’re half way up the tube I carefully put my other hand on the end and take them outside. If one escapes and comes up my arm I just freeze. “I KNOW THEY’RE NOT DANGEROUS”. I keep telling myself this, but they just look frightening.
There was a lady in Emerald who was driving her car down a steep mountain road, when she saw a huntsman coming up towards her on steering-wheel column. She panicked and promptly drove into a tree, or three. I cannot say I would have behaved any differently.
Most men are just as scared of them as women. This leads me to wondering if it’s just the spider they’re afraid of? I don’t know, but I do know their looks are against them.
*shudders*
I had to get used to spiders when one of my ex-housemates decided to keep them as pets. Previous to that he had a snake. But I think they’re much nicer – all slithery and smooth. I think it’s the hairiness of spiders that gets me.
shudders and shivers…its not the hairiness of the spiders that does for me (I’ve got to be nice – there is a huntsman looking over my shoulder from the corner of the ceiling as I bang away) but the fangs, and the lots of little eyes and the many legs and the creepy way they (I was going to say walk) move.
But at least someone seems to enjoy them…this is from a paper I found on the web from the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine titled “Bird-spiders (Arachnida, Mygalomorphae) as perceived by the inhabitants of the village of Pedra Branca, Bahia State, Brazil”: “…the true tarantulas are araneomorph spiders of the widespread genus Lycosa. The name ‘tarantula’ comes from a cult in Taranto, Southern Italy where the bite of a spider (Lycosa and Latrodectus) served as a pretext for dionisiac reunions of a frenetic dance. The symptoms of the affliction may include dizziness, weakness, feelings of anguish, psychomotor agitations, stomach and muscular pains, nausea and increased erotic appetite in its acute phase. This author states that tarantism is related to Saint Paul’s legend of the eradication of venomous creatures from Malta.”
Now that’s a cult I don’t want to join…
If you are so close to one that you can see its fangs and the lots of eyes. Wouldn’t you be too close? Shiver, shiver. As long as they live on my ceiling and don’t come rushing down the wall to get into my bed (True. Next time you’re looking at one and you say “OK, you keep to your part of the ceiling and don’t encroach on my part of the room. We’ll get along just fine”. Having shaken hands on the deal-as it were-sometimes they keep rushing down the wall and heading for the bed). If they stick to their part of the deal I’m quite happy to call them Fred or Monica and I’ll even talk to them.
Where they do get the thin edge of the wedge, is when they are dead. With their legs folded up they become so much smaller you feel rotten for throwing a boot at it.
Where the bird-spiders (?) bird-eating spiders(?) have it over tarantulas is their shape. Slim waists bulbous body. Also they don’t fight back. Sweep them out of the hut and they will edge themselves back into it-with discretion. Whereas these huge tarantulas at/near/by the rivers in the Amazonian jungle are blo-dy-minded, they will argue the toss, and they will jump towards you. Gulp, gulp. Honestly, think of a huge spider, the size of a dinner-plate, an animal covered with hair. There you stand-at the edge of the river waiting to get into the dinghy. Torrential rain has turned the soil into a quagmire and your boots have sunk deep into this morass, making movement v difficult. Suddenly your peripheral vision picks up the fact that something has just moved. You’ve just had time to adjust your vision when the freakin’ creature takes a jump towards you! It’s not a good way to start the day. I’m sweating at the mere thought of it.
Cheers
V.
The bite of the tarantula of southern Italy was also said to send people into a wierd sort of dance. Hence the dance called the tarentella.
Just testing
Cheers
Venise
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