Gosh that's a big spider!

[chrisso]

I just found this fella doing some good work of stopping bugs coming up my back stairs. He's rather large and brown, anyone know what kind of spider he is?

Hi Mrs K, if I was you id google Sydney Funnelweb.Atrax Robustus--looks very similar to that . Hope its not coz The F.Webb is ptobably the worlds most venomous spider. The males are worse than the females.Luckily they dont drink or itd be like Jake the Muss with 8 legs.

[Trudes]

His business was stopping bugs coming up you stairs. Which would you prefer in the house?

If you're nice to him he might share some of his super spidy sense with you. Could come in very handy in a biker v white van man situation.

Aparently we're the white van driving mother flippers now!!

Anyway, I moved him outside, I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night from a dream of him sitting on my face. I only like dreaming of Hitcher.

[gijoe1313]

I likey my creepy crawlies I do, good on ya for not squishing him and giving him a chance to relocate in the garden. He'll do a good job and just be content with mooshing on the other creepy crawlies!

Whats the worse that could happen? He could slurp on some radioactive mutagens and other genic fluids and grow and grow ... and then slurp on some brainstems and suddenly gain a keen intelligence... and then ...

[Usarka]

Hey chrisso we dont have all your nasty oz spiders!

or do we

on this topic - if you have a nasty bug that you think is from off-shore and shouldnt be here, i've been told the correct process is to put it in a jar then chuck it in the freezer. Then contact MAF and they have a nice clean frozen specimen to examine, rather than guts with a shoe print, or something contaminated with pesticides etc.

[alley cat]

im not a squasher either, but damn thats freaky!
I catch them in a jar and slide the paper under to move critters like that.
I still get the heebie jeebies big time tho! esp if they go crazy and start zooming around.
Bizarre how spiders freak people out like that

[jrandom]

I was bitten on the foot by a what I can only assume was a whitetail spider a couple of weeks ago. I was inebriated at the time of the bite, unfortunately, sitting and dozing on the couch in my lounge, so I only came to the conclusion that I'd been bitten when I noticed the two puncture marks in the middle of a painful red patch on my foot.

The approximately 1cm-diameter necrotic ulcer that formed still hasn't quite finished healing.



The initial pain level was about the same as a wasp sting, but lasted for a couple of days. After that, it was just sore to the touch; I had to put a band-aid over the bite to wear shoes without noticing it as I walked.

I ripped the scab off it a couple of days ago out of curiosity, and the hole in my foot bled quite copiously. Whitetail venom (if that's what it was) really does dissolve significant chunks of one's anatomy! I have a noticeable bit of scar tissue on the top of my foot, now.

I'm not arachnophobic, but I'd definitely rather put up with a few bee or wasp stings than get bitten by one of those bastards again.

[chrisso]

Hey chrisso we dont have all your nasty oz spiders!

or do we

on this topic - if you have a nasty bug that you think is from off-shore and shouldnt be here, i've been told the correct process is to put it in a jar then chuck it in the freezer. Then contact MAF and they have a nice clean frozen specimen to examine, rather than guts with a shoe print, or something contaminated with pesticides etc.

As long as you dont get Cane Toads.We get lots of Funnel Web Spideys round here-we send them off to the Hospital so they can milk them for Anti-venom.The milking stool must be pretty small...

[007XX]

so its true, you are french!

'fraid so...Don't hold it against me, will ya?

I'm not arachnophobic, but I'd definitely rather put up with a few bee or wasp stings than get bitten by one of those bastards again.

+1

[Trudes]

I used to work in the produce department of a supermarket years ago and remember opening up a box of bananas one day and found a large strange looking spider in amongst the bananas, he was dead thankfully, but I showed the boss and he just shrugged and said something about him not hurting me as he's dead, did wonder at the time though how many non-native species sneak into NZ via banana boxes and such.

[Usarka]

Supposedly whitetails are poisionous because they eat daddylongleg spiders, who themselves are very poisoinous but cant bite hoomans.

See a quack if those things don't heal, I know two people who almost lost limbs because of their bites

[jrandom]

See a quack if those things don't heal, I know two people who almost lost limbs because of their bites

Were they healthy adults?

My ex-wife's stepfather's mother lost half her thumb to a whitetail bite a few months before she died from cancer (talk about fate adding insult to injury, eh?)

Apparently young children and old or ill people are most at risk.

[chrisso]

this is a Sydney Funnel Web.Ive seen them totally black. Your spider looks hairier than this.

[Usarka]

Were they healthy adults?

Yep. Well one munched party pills like they were going to be made illegal, so I guess only one of them was....

if it doesnt get worse you're probably ok (but i'm not a quack)

there's a lot of debate about whitetail bites - the scientists say there is not much evidence, and the doctors say the patient data says otherwise.....

[007XX]

Supposedly whitetails are poisionous because they eat daddylongleg spiders, who themselves are very poisoinous but cant bite hoomans.

See a quack if those things don't heal, I know two people who almost lost limbs because of their bites

I had heard that they ate all other types of spiders, storing the venom. Therefor the potency of the said venom would vary from whitetail to whitetail as it would be a compounded concoction of whatever dinner had been over the last few days for Little Miss or Master Whitetail.

It would explain why some people react differently to it, besides their respective strength or lack thereof in immuno defence.

[chrisso]

Supposedly whitetails are poisionous because they eat daddylongleg spiders, who themselves are very poisoinous but cant bite hoomans.

See a quack if those things don't heal, I know two people who almost lost limbs because of their bites

was a column here a while back bout Whitetails, someone said that its not their venom but bacteria in it that destroys your skin.Nasty lil feckers but